THE LIFE OF 
ROBERT BROWNING 



W. HALL GRIFFIN 
e H. C. MINCHIN 




Book 'U7 



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^ 









-L-.^-'TvO^ .. ^ 



Tllli LIFE or KOBEKT BROWNING 



THE LIFE OF 
ROBERT BROWNING 

WITH NOTICES OF HIS WRITINGS 
HIS FAMILY, & HIS FRIHNDS 



BY 

W. HALL GRIFFIN 

COMPLrriD ANT> KDrTKD BY 

HARRY CHRISTOPHER MINGHIN 



WITH THIRTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 






/ 



.\s 



^*,»i 



' PREFACE 

No apology is expected from the author of a work of 
imagination, but a biographer must show cause 
why he has undertaken his task. Unhappily, in 
me present case, this duty cannot be carried out by him with 
whom the design originated. Professor Hall Griffin had 
amassed much material for a biography of Robert Browning, 
whose career and writings had been for many years a principal 
subject of his thout;ht and study. He had been at great pains 
to identify the sites of his early homes in South London ; 
thence he had followed him to Asolo and to Florence, and 
had gone on pilgrimage to the various cities and regions of 
Italy which were visited by the poet and his wife during 
their summer wanderings, or were the scene of their winter 
sojourns. N'or had he neglected spots which were closely 
connected with his later years ; La Saisiaz, for instance, and, 
above all, Venice. He had enjoyed the friendship of Brown- 
ing's son and sister, who gave him ungrudging help; Miss 
Browning's worjdcfful memory, in particular, throwing light 
upon many objure points in her brother's early history ; 
while h/t had made, with Mr./Barrett Browning's sanction, an 
extensive examination of tnc books in the Palazzo Rez- 
zonico, those " wisest, ancif^nt books," amid which the future 
poet passed his childhood. The recollections of surviving 
friends had been also put at his disposal ; those, for example, 
of the late Sir Theodore Martin and of M'-. W. C. Cartwright, 
of Aynhoe, who was on terms of close intimacy with Brown- 
ing in Florence and in Rome. At last he was ready to 
begin ; and rather more than half his projected work was 
written, when an acute attack of illness obliged him to lay 
aside his pen, as it proved for ever. 



'7 3\ 



/ , ■ 



' PREFACE 

NO apology is expected from the author of a work of 
imafjination, but a biographer must show cause- 
why he has undertaken his task. Unhappily, in 
the present case, this duty cannot be carried out by him with 
whom the design originated. Professor Hal! Griffin had 
amassed much material for a biography of Robert Browning, 
whose career and writings had been for many years a principal 
subject of his thou;;lit and study. He had been at great pains 
to identify the sites of his early homes in South London ; 
thence he had followed him to Asolo and to Florence, and 
had gone on pilgrimage to the various cities and regions of 
Italy which were visited by the poet and his wife during 
their summer wanderings, or were the scene of their winter 
sojourns. Nor had he neglected spots which were closely 
connected with his later years ; La Saisiaz, for instance, and, 
above all, Venice. He had enjoyed the friendship of Brown- 
ing's son and sister, who gave him ungrudging help; Miss 
Browning's woijficfful memory, in particular, throwing light 
up>on many ob.</urc points in her brother's early history ; 
while h/t had made, with Mr.,Barrett 13rowning's sanction, an 
extensive examination of pe books in the Palazzo Rez- 
zonico, those " wisest, anciont books," amid which the future 
{xxrt passed his childhood. The recollections of surviving 
friends had been also put at his disposal ; those, for example, 
of the late Sir Theodore Martin and of M'-. VV. C. Cartwright, 
of Aynhoe, who was on terms of close intimacy with Brown- 
ing in Florence .md in Rome. At last he was ready to 
begin ; and rather more than half his projected work was 
written, when an acute attack of illness obliged him to lay 
aside his pen, as it proved for ever. 



vi THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Should this mass of material and this partial achievement 
be left to gather dust, unseen and useless? Or should 
another hand, following the author's design as closely as 
might be practicable, seek to complete the unfinished fabric ? 
These were questions which Professor Griffin's executor was 
presently called upon to decide. After consultation with 
those acquainted with his plans, especially with Professor 
Churton Collins, whose loss also we have since had to deplore 
the verdict was that the attempt, though difficult, should at 
least be made. The present volume is the result of that 
decision. 

As Professor Griffin's collaborator (if the term may pass) 
read through the manuscript and notes entrusted to him 
the author's purpose became apparent. Something more 
complete and more exact than what his predecessors had 
achieved was evidently intended. Without the least desire 
to depreciate the interest of earlier Lives, certain errors — 
errors both of fact and of inference — were to be rectified. 
For the attainment of this end new material was available, 
to which Mrs. Orr, for example — whose work must always 
possess a peculiar attraction, inasmuch as she had the 
advantage of a close friendship with Browning — had not 
access ; chiefly the Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth 
Barrett Barrett, the four volumes of the poet's letters privately 
printed by Mr. Wise, and Alfred Domett's unpublished diary, 
of which last Professor Griffin was practically the discoverer. 
Again, as to the poems, no systematic interpretation of them 
was contemplated, such as is included in Professor Dowden's 
Robert Browning, nor any detailed criticism ; but, on the 
other hand, everything that could be discovered as to their 
origins, their growth and their reception by the public was 
to be included. Such was the impression which the manu- 
script conveyed, and it is on these lines that the task of 
completion has been attempted. In the result, what is now 
offered is not a study of the life of Robert Browning seen 
through a temperament, but a record based upon a sympathetic 
review and interpretation of accepted facts. 

In the forefront of works which have been consulted, or 
from which brief citations have been made, are to be placed 



PREFACE vii 

the Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland 
Orr, and her Handbook ; and the biographical studies of the 
poet by the late Mr. W. Sharp and by Professor Dowden 
To these must be added T. A. Trollope's What I Remember ; 
Miss Frances Power Cobbe's autobiography and her Italics ; 
Macready's Reminiscences ; Forster's Life of Dickens and 
his Walter Savage Landor, a Biography ; Ruskin's Modern 
Painters; Gavan Duffy's Cojiversations with Carlyle and 
My Life in Tzvo Hemisplieres ; Miss Martineau's Aiito- 
biography ; Mrs. Andrew Crosse's Red Letter Days ; Fanny 
Kemble's FurtJier Records ; Dr. Moncure Conway's Memorials 
of South Place ; Nathaniel Hawthorne's Notebooks ; Sir T. 
Wemyss Reid's Life of Lord Houghton ; Margaret Fuller's 
Memoirs ; The Life and Letters of Sir f. E. Millais ; Connop 
Thirl wall's Letters to a Friend ; the Abbe J. Dominique's 
Le poHc Robert Brownittg d Ste. Marie de Pornic ; and several 
more. Some valuable information has been gleaned from 
periodicals, particularly from Mrs. Bronson's papers, Brown- 
ing in Venice {Cornhill 2.n6i Century, ¥eb. 1902) and Broivning 
in Asolo {Century, 1900) ; those by Kate Field on Mrs. Browning 
and on Tlie Last Days of Walter Savage Landor {Atlantic 
Monthly, September, 1861 and April, 1866) ; Miss Masson's 
Robert Broivning in Edinburgh {Cornhill, February, 1909, by 
kind permission of Editor and Author) ; Th. Bentzon's A 
French Friend of Browning {Scribner, July, 1896) ; and Mr. 
Edmund Gosse's Svoinbur^ie: Personal Recollections {Fort- 
nightly Review, June, 1909). 

It is my duty and pleasure as collaborator to thank those 
who by conversation or letter have helped me to form a 
clearer conception of Browning's character and bearing ; 
especially Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Colvin, 
and Mrs. R. Courtenay Bell; Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Lord 
Tennyson, the Master of Balliol, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur 
Sidgwick, Mr. A. L. Smith, Mr. R. C. Lehmann, Mr. Comyns 
Carr, and Mr. Percy Fitzgerald. I am also indebted to 
several of the above for leave to derive information from 
their published works; from Mr. Gosse's Robert Browning: 
Personalia and his article Robert Broivning in the Supple- 
ment to the Dictionary of National Biography ; from Mr. 



viii THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Rossetti's Some Reminiscences and Rtiskin, Rossetti, Pre- 
raphaelitism ; from Mr. Lehmann's Memories of Half a 
Century ; from Mr. Comyns Carr's Some Eminent Victorians ; 
from Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's John Forster ; and from Tenny- 
son : a Memoir. I also desire to express my acknowledg- 
ment of permission to make use of some passages in Mr. 
Henry James's William Wetmore Story and his Friends, 
Lady Ritchie's Records of Tennyson, Rttskiti and tJte Brown- 
ings, and Mr. Marcus B. Huish's Happy England. My thanks 
are due to Messrs. F. Warne and Co. for leave to cite a 
passage from a preface by Mrs. Ogilvy, prefixed to their 
edition of Mrs. Browning's poems ; to Balliol College for a 
similar sanction in the case of The Life and Letters of 
Benjamin Jotvett ; to the late Dr. F. J. Furnivall for the loan 
of an annotated copy of his Browning Bibliography and for 
some valuable suggestions ; to Mr. Thomas J. Wise for access 
granted to Browning's privately printed Letters, and to the 
publications of the Browning Society ; and to Mr. Alfred 
Nelson Domett, who put his father's diary and two portraits 
at Professor Grififin's disposal. Above all, Mr. Barrett 
Browning is to be thanked, both for his assent to the scheme 
and for his permission, granted in conjunction with his 
representatives, Messrs. Smith and Elder, to utilize copyright 
matter, whether in the shape of letters or poems. If 
any other acknowledgment remain unpaid, the omission is 
inadvertent, and may, I trust, be pardoned. 

In conclusion, I have to tender my sincere thanks to 
Mrs. Hall Griffin for entrusting me with a delicate and 
honourable task, of whose responsibilities I have been fully 
sensible, and to express the hope that she and Professor 
Griffin's friends, as well as readers of this book in general, 
may not be wholly dissatisfied with the result. 

H. C. M. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

PREFACE V 

I. PARENTAGE AND EARLY HOME INFLUENCES ... I 

n. BOYHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS ^^ 

IIL PAULINE 41 

IV. PARACELSUS 6l 

V. EARLY FRIENDS 79 

VI. SORDELLO 89 

VII. BROWNING AND THE DRAMA I04 

VIII. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES 122 

IX. MARRIAGE I42 

X. EARLY YEARS IN FLORENCE 1 56 

XI. WORK AND PLAY I79 

XII. LATER MARRIED YEARS 197 

XIII. SORROW AND ACHIEVEMENT 223 

XIV. NOTES FROM A DIARY 247 

XV. THE LAST DECADE 265 

XVI. THE MAN AND THE POET 284 

APPENDIX 305 

INDEX 329 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Robert Browming, 1889 ... Frontispiece 

Photo^rnphby U". H ORovt 

KACiKC rAce 

Southampton Strekt, C.\mberwell, 1898 .28 

From a Drawing Ijy E. Hull 

KoBEKi Rrowmnm;, 1835 76- 

From an Engraving t»y j. C. Armvta<;k 

AtrRFD DOMKTT, 1836 82 

Krom a Drawing by Lance 

ASOIX) 96 

fhojograph by W. Hall Griffin 

tMZ.NnKTH BaRRETI BROWNING WHKN .\ GiRI 1 44 

Sketched by her sistrr, Arabella Barrf.tt 

CASA (iUIDI, FROM THE I'lTTI I'ALACE 162 

Photograph by W Hall Griffin 

Miss Blaoden's Villa at Bellosguardo . .164 

Pholoicniph by \V. H.M.i. (iRiKHN 

Casa CiUiDi AND Felice Church . . 165 

I'hotofraph by W HallGrikmn 

"The Guakihan Angkl" 166 

By Gt'KRCiNO (S. Agosiino. Hanoi 

Caricatures drawn nv Robert Browning, Senior, Father 
OF THE Poet '87 



xii THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

PACING PAGE 

Caricature drawn by Robert Browning, Senior, Father 
OF THE Poet 188 

Statue of Duke Ferdinand, Annunziata Piazza, Florence 198 
Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 

Portraits of Andrea del Sarto and Lucrezia Fede, his 

Wife 200 

From the Painting in the Pitti Palace. Photograph by Alinari 

The Coronation of the Virgin 202 

From the Painting by Fra Lipro Lippi in the Belle Arti, Florence 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1858 212 

From an Engraving after a Photograph by Macairf. 

BETWEEN PAGES 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1859 .... 216-217 

From the Drawing by Field Talfolrd in the National Portrait 
Gallery 

Robert Browning, 1859 216-217 

From the Drawing by Field Talfourd in the National Portrait 
Gallery 

FACING PAGE 

Paddington Canal, as seen from Browning's House in 

Warwick Crescent 226 

Photograph by A. Rischgitz 

MS. OF "The Ring and the Book" 228 

Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 

Piazza of San Lorenzo, Florence, where the "Square 

Old Yellow Book" was Bought 230 

Photograph by Alinari 
Robert Browning, 1865 • 236 

From the Painting by G. F. WATTS K.A. Photograph by 
Frederick Hollyer 

The San Clemente Gate, .^rezzo 240 

Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 

Alfred Domett, 1871 248 

From a Photograph 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

FACING PAGE 

Robert Browning (Date Unknown, circa 1873) • • .252 

From a Photograph by Fradelle & YouNG 

The Chalet of la Saisl-vz 263 >' 

Photograph by W. Hall (Jkiki-in 

La Saleve, overlooking the Arve and Rhone Valley . 264 

Entrance Gate, Asolo 268 

Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 

Robert Browning, 1885 270. 

Photograph by Bassano 

MS. OF "Wanting is What?" 272- 

Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 

Mrs. Arthur Bronson, 1890 274V 

From a Painting 

Robert Browning, 1884 . .• 276 

From the Painting by Rudolph Lehmann in the National Portrait 
Gallery 

Grand Canal and Palazzo Rezzonico 278 

Photograph by W. HALL Griffin 

Robert Browning, 1889 279. 

Photograph by Fradelle & Young 

Main Street of Asolo 280V 

Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 

Mrs. Bronson's Loggia, Asolo . . .... 281 . 

Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 

Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice 282- 

Photograph by W. Hall Griffin 



THE LIFE OF 
ROBERT BROWNING 



CHAPTER I 

PARENTAGE AND EARLY HOME 
INFLUENCES 

Robert Hrowning's inheritance from his grandfather — His father's 
early manhood in the West Indies, return to Enj,'land, mode of life and 
marriaj^e — His mother's parentage — His grandfather and father recon- 
ciled — His favourite uncle, Reuben — Reuben's gifts to him— Reuben's 
estimate of his half-brother, the poet's father — Influence of Hrowning's 
home upon his mental growth — Early reading in his father's library — 
His love of pictures — Gdrard de Lairessc and the Dulwich Gallery — His 
love of music — " The Handsman Avison " — His masters, Abel and John 
Relfc — His taste for out-of-the-way learning — Bernard dc Mandeville and 
"putting a case " — His acquaintance with Daniel Bartoli's Simboli — His 
debt to Wanley's Wonders of the Little ll'or/tt, and to the Biographic 
Universelle. 



o 



N the fly-leaf of a large, old-fashioned, illustrated 
family Bible there stands written in a bold, clear 
hand : — 



" Robert Browning married to Sarah Anna Wiedemann at 
Camberwcll Feb 19 181 1. 
Robert Browning born 7th May 181 2. 
Sarah Anna Browning born yih Jan 18 14." 

The handwriting is that of the poet's father, and these 
names are those of the four who composed the household at 
Southampton Street, Camberwcll, where, wrote one who 
knew tlicm well,' " father, mother, only son, and only 

' Alfred DomcU. 



2 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

daughter, formed a most united, harmonious, and intellectual 
family." 

Browning has recorded two facts connected with his own 
birth ; that he was born with light yellow hair, and that he 
was born " supremely passionate." As, according to the 
same authority, his father was "tender-hearted to a fault," 
and as his mother was equally gentle, we must doubtless 
look to his grandfather, the first really recognizable figure in 
the family history, for the origin of this passionate element 
in the poet's nature. Robert Browning, the grandfather, was 
a handsome, vigorous, capable business man, first a clerk, 
and subsequently head of a department in the Bank of 
England. Evidences of his possession of a hasty and 
irascible temper are to be found in his dealings with his 
eldest son, Robert, who was to become, in course of time, the 
poet's father. 

He was twice married, first to Margaret Tittle, a West 
Indian lady. They settled at Battersea, then a quiet river- 
side village, where, in 1782, their eldest son was born. Two 
years later the little family moved to Camborwell, then also 
a village, whose square embattled church tower was visible 
across the fields from Battersea, as it was from the river 
bridges and the cross roads of the Strand. It stood at the 
base of the pretty, tree-clad slopes of Denmark Hill, Heme 
Hill, and Champion Hill, amid hedgerows and oak trees, 
surrounded by well-stocked pastures and their overshadowing 
willows, amid flowers and fruit trees, which were the haunt of 
the butterfly. Was not the " Camberwell Beauty " famous ? 
Indeed, when the Browning household moved to Camberwell 
the parish authorities had just been busy " apprehending " 
the too numerous caterpillars, and in a single season had 
secured some four hundred bushels ! A generation later, in 
1 8 10, Dame Priscilla Wakefield^ in her Perambtdations 
described Camberwell as " a pleasant retreat for those who 
have a taste for the country, while their avocations still call 
them daily to London, as it is only three miles from that 
city ; " and as Margaret Tittle's husband was a clerk in the 
Bank, Dame Priscilla's description may well apply to him. 

• Giandmother of the famous colonizer of New Zealand, Edmund Gibbon 
Wakefield. 



HIS FATHER'S YOUTH 3 

Two other children * were born at Camberwell, and five years 
after the removal from Battersea, in the spring of the year in 
which the Bastille fell, Margaret Tittle was laid to rest beside 
her youngest boy in the churchyard of the old parish church 
of St. Giles, not far from the village green, famous then and 
for more than fifty years afterwards for its boisterous annual 
Fair. Her sole surviving son, Robert, was but a child of 
seven, too young to appreciate the stirring events then taking 
place in the French capital where he was to pass the closing 
years of his life, and too young to take interest in the reso- 
lutions just submitted by Wilberforce to Parliament for the 
abolition of the slave trade. But some thirteen years later, 
when he found himself among the slaves at St. Kitt's, in a 
lucrative position on his late mother's sugar plantation, " he 
conceived such a hatred of the slave system . . . that he 
relinquished every prospect — supported himself, while there, 
in some other capacity, and came back while yet a boy, 
to his father's profound astonishment and rage." He had 
actually tried to teach a negro to read ! His father was no 
longer a widower ; five years after his first wife's death, when 
his son was twelve and he a man of forty-five, he had married 
a bride of twenty-three. Margaret Tittle's portrait was 
promptly relegated to the garret, and Margaret Tittle's son 
was before long allotted a definite career on his mother's 
West Indian estate. The " profound astonishment and rage " 
of the passionate man of fifty-three at his son's return are not 
inexplicable. Parson Adams, we are told, was "a little 
encumbered with a wife and six children ; " Mr. Browning's 
second marriage involved provision for nine. It is true that 
the "handsome income of twenty-three pounds a year" 
assigned by Fielding to the good parson did not represent 
that of the poet's grandfather ; but a salary of less than 
;£^500 a year is perhaps not so ample a provision for thirteen 
people as to lead a practical man to look with complacency 
upon the renunciation by his eldest son of a lucrative position, 
for conscientious scruples which he evidently did not share. 
He doubtless regarded this act very much as Sir Timothy 
Shelley regarded some of the acts of his incomprehensible 

• Margaret Morris, died unmarried in 1857, and William, died 1784, in 
infancy. 



4 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

son. " My father," wrote Browning in regard to this matter, 
"on his return, had the intention of devoting himself to art, 
for which he had many qualifications and abundant love ; 
but the quarrel with his father, who married again and con- 
tinued to hate him till a few years before his death, induced 
him to go at once and consume his life after a fashion he 
always detested." ^ This fashion was to follow in the paternal 
footsteps by becoming a clerk in the Bank of England. He 
took the decisive step in November, 1803, four months after 
attaining his majority. Nearly fifty years later Browning's 
father doubtless welcomed his release as heartily as Charles 
Lamb welcomed his, when he quitted his desk in Leadenhall 
Street some thirty years before. " Here am I," wrote Lamb 
to Wordsworth in 1825, "after thirty-three years' slavery, 
sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock, this finest of April 
mornings, a freed man, with ;^44i a year for the remainder 
of my life." The " slavery " of the poet's father had lasted 
seventeen years longer than that of Lamb, but his retiring 
pension amounted to not quite half that assigned to the 
author of Elia by the directors of the East India Company. 

Sarah Anna Wiedemann, the poet's mother, who was of 
German parentage, though born in Scotland, had in her 
girlhood also lived at Camberwell, where she and her sister 
Christiana had their residence with an uncle. Christiana, 
whose eldest son James became one of Browning's early 
intimates, was the aunt who generously paid for the publica- 
tion of Pauline in 1833. She had married a well-to-do 
local brewer, Mr. John Silverthorne, and when Browning's 
grandfather, eight years after the West Indian crisis, heard 
that his eldest son was a suitor for the remaining Miss 
Wiedemann, " he benevolently waited upon her uncle," wrote 
the poet to Miss Barrett in 1846, "to assure him that his 
niece would be thrown away on a man so evidently born to 
be hanged ! — these were his words." Their very violence, in 
all probability, militated against the effect they were intended 
to produce. The marriage took place, although without his 
sanction. 

Passionate and self-willed as he was, Robert Browning's 
grandfather seems to have been of a far more placable nature 

' Letters 0/ Robert Browning and Elhabeth Barrett Barrett.^ vol. ii. p. 477. 



HIS IRASCIBLE GRANDFATHER 5 

than his future father-in-law, Mr. Barrett, who never forgave 
the marriage of his eldest daughter Elizabeth, of his second 
daughter Henrietta, or of his son Alfred. Son or daughter, 
the offence was the same ; mention of them must never again 
be made in his presence, and their names were at once struck 
from his will. But, in 18 19, two years before Robert Browning, 
the grandfather, retired from the Bank on a pension of ;^42i 
a year, he made his will, and in it he wrote : — 

*' As my son Robert Browning and daughter Margaret Morris 
Browning have had by their Uncle Tittle and Aunt Mill a much 
greater proportion than can be left to ray [nine] other dear children, 
I trust they will not think I am deficient in love and regard to them : 
I give to my said dear children Robert and Margaret Morris 
Browning, ten pounds each for a ring. I give to my dear wife Jane 
Browning, all the rest I shall die possessed of, trusting in her love 
and prudence she will to the best in her power, take care of our 
dear children." ^ 

As the irascible grandparent lived to see the publica- 
tion of Pauline in 1833,^ it would seem that the duration 
of the quarrel has been somewhat exaggerated, and that 
friendly intercourse may probably be regarded as having 
been resumed by the date of the not unkindly worded 
will, when the poet was a child of seven. Collateral evi- 
dence is found in the family tradition that the old man 
stood in dread of the proximity of his lively grandchild 
to his gouty foot. However this may be, it is certain that, 
after his death at the age of eighty-four, his widow, who was 
but eleven years older than her stepson, the poet's father, 
moved from Islington, where her husband had died, and 
settled once more on the south side of the river, just beyond 
the toll-bar at New Cross, in one of the five houses of Albert 
Terrace, about a hundred yards from the farmhouse cottage 
in which her stepson and his family came to dwell in 
December, 1840. It is also certain that cordial relations 
existed between the two households. Margaret Tittle's 
portrait had ere this emerged from the garret, and was 

' Browning Soc. Papers, Iviii., Robert Browning's Ancestors, by Dr. F. J. 
Furnivall, p. 14. 

* /'aw//«^ appeared in March, 1833; ^^c grandfather died in September, 



6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

hanging in her son's dining-room. At New Cross the 
widow's second son, Reuben, the poet's favourite uncle and 
but nine years his senior, stabled his horse at " The Cottage," 
as there was no stable at Albert Terrace on the opposite 
side of the high-road ; and the poet, a skilful rider from 
boyhood, had free use of the horse, a gallop upon whose back 
inspired the anapaestic lines, As I ride, as I ride, in which 
he commemorates the Arab chieftain, Abd el Kadr. But 
there are clear indications of pleasant intercourse even during 
the lifetime of the Irascible, one of which has a special sug- 
gestiveness, Reuben Browning, an excellent classical scholar, 
evidently took an early and kindly interest in the studies of 
his nephew, for on the flyleaf of a translation of Horace — 
whose Odes Browning's father is said to have known by 
heart — is written in Reuben's clear handwriting, " Robert 
Browning, July, 1824, the gift of his Uncle, Reuben Browning." 
This gift to the boy of twelve, who was then writing his first 
volume of Byronic verse, was to bear unexpected fruit ; for 
the translation was that of Christopher Smart, whose sad 
life-story Browning doubtless soon learnt from his book- 
loving father, and with whose Song to David he was not long 
in becoming famihar. Sixty-three years later. Smart, "who 
translated Horace," was hailed by the poet of seventy-five, in 
his Parlcyings with Certain People of Importance in tJieir 
Day^ as one who had sung 

" A song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang, 
And stations you for once on either hand 
With Milton and with Keats." 

Of Smart's long-neglected poem, termed by Rossetti " a 
masterpiece of rich imagery, exhaustive resources and 
reverberant sound," Browning became the great champion. 
In later days he loved to recite its fervid stanzas to his 
friends, and in earlier days it was not without influence upon 
the evolution of his own noble Saul ; but ten years before 
the date of Saul the sad fate of the author of the Song to 
David — Smart's only real poem — which was composed in 
Bedlam, had inspired some of the most striking lines in 
Paracelsus (1835) : — 



CHRISTOPHER SMART 7 

" One man shall crawl 
Through life surrounded with all stirring things, 
Unmoved ; and he goes mad : and from the wreck 
Of what he was, by his wild talk alone, 
You first collect how great a spirit he hid." ^ 

One other gift from his Uncle Reuben is worth mention. 
Its date is six years later than that of the Horace, but still 
three years before the death of the grandfather. It was not 
a translation this time, but an original ; an exquisite edition 
of the Encheiridion of Epictetus, printed by the scholarly and 
unfortunate Robert Foulis, whom Gray ranked with the 
Etiennes and Elzevirs, and of whose Homer Gibbon declared 
that it made even that " poet's sense appear more beautiful 
and transparent." Gray and Gibbon, moreover, were speak- 
ing of the ordinary editions of the Glasgow printer : every 
page of Browning's Encheiridion was a page of pure white silk. 

Robert Browning, the grandfather, is said to have mainly 
confined his reading to the Bible and Tom Jones^ but he cer- 
tainly gave all three of his sons an excellent education. The 
poet's father " was a scholar and knew Greek " as well 
as Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew. The exact 
Latin scholarship of Reuben Browning drew words of praise 
from the lips of Lord Beaconsfield ; ^ and William Shergold 
Browning, the eldest son by the second marriage, contributed 
essays to the Gentleman s Magazine, and wrote, as well as 
some forgotten historical novels, a very acceptable History 
of the Higiienots. The practical father, who had placed his 
firstborn in the Bank of England, secured for the two younger 
sons positions with Messrs. Rothschild ; Reuben was in the 
London office, and William Shergold— of whom the house- 
holds at New Cross, therefore, saw but little— was in Paris 
from 1824 till October, 1845. Reuben was twenty-one years 
younger than his half-brother Robert, the poet's father, of 
whom he said that " one could not know him without being 

* "Depend upon it," he wrote in 1887, "no goody-goody writer ever con- 
ceived or executed the stanzas I could repeat— as I did, with all the effect I 
supposed would follow— to people of authority enough : Tennyson, the present 
Bishop of London, and, last year, to Wendell Holmes, who had asked mc 
innocently at Oxford * whether I knew the wonderful poem.' " 

- See Mrs, Orr's Life, p. 8l. 



8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

inspired with regard and admiration." He cordially admired 
his "extraordinary talents, profound intelligence, and pre- 
eminent good nature, his facetious epigrams, and fugitive 
poems" — the words are his own — and regretted that, owing 
to a most unassuming, reticent, and retiring nature, " of all 
his acquaintance few were cognisant of his intrinsic worth." 
Reuben placed on record his impressions, and this is his 
description : — 

•* His wonderful store of information might really be compared 
to an inexhaustible mine. It comprised not merely a thorough 
scholastic outline of the world, but the critical points of ancient and 
modern history, the lore of the Middle Ages, all political combina- 
tions of parties, their description and consequences ; and especially 
the lives of the poets and painters, concerning whom he ever had to 
communicate some interesting anecdote not generally known. In 
short, he was a living encyclopaedia. The love of reading attracted 
him by sympathy to books ; old books were his delight, and by his 
continual search after them he not only knew all the old book- 
stalls in London, but their contents, and if any scarce work were 
spoken of, he could tell forthwith where a copy of it could be had. 
Nay, he would even describe in what part of the shop it was placed, 
and the price likely to be asked for it. Thus his own library became 
his treasure. His books, however, were confessedly not remarkable 
for costly binding, but for their rarity or for interesting remarks he 
had to make on most of them ; and his memory was so good that 
not infrequently, when a conversation at his table had reference to 
any particular subject, has he quietly left the room and in the dark, 
from a thousand volumes in his library, brought two or three 
illustrations of the point under discussion." * 

The well-knit, rather undersized, blue-eyed, bright-com- 
plexioned book-lover, who had " the scent of a hound and 
the snap of a bull-dog " for an old or rare volume, eagerly 
visiting the bookstalls of London or, in later days, those on 
the Quais of Paris, recalls the tall, quick-eyed, rapid-striding 
Southey bent on similar quests ; and the |,home at South- 
ampton Street resembled Greta Hall in that it was lite- 
rally overflowing with books. " Why, Montesinos," remarks 

* Introductory notes by Reuben Browning, prefixed to a small volume of 
sketches by Robert Browning, senior. The sale of this work in an auction room 
is recorded in the Art Journal, 1896, p. 55. 



IN HIS FATHER'S LIBRARY 9 

Southey, at the beginning of his Colloquy on the Library, 
" with these books, and the delight you take in their constant 
society, what have you to covet or desire ? " " Nothing," was 
the reply — " except more books." 

Such a book-lover, then, was the poet's father ; and 
rightly to understand the poet's own development it is 
absolutely essential to understand his home, for there to 
all intents and purposes he received his whole early educa- 
tion ; consideration of what more conventional training he 
had may fitly, for the moment, be postponed. His school 
life counts for very little ; of college life he had practically 
none ; but among his father's books he read voraciously. 
" It was in this way," said his sister, " that Robert became 
very early familiar with subjects generally unknown to boys." 

The Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their 
Day, published in 1887, towards the close of his life, has, no 
less than Pauline at the beginning of his career, a distinctly 
autobiographical importance, and affords an excellent ex- 
ample of the peculiar home influences exerted upon Browning 
during his early life. Reference has already been made to 
Christopher Smart, but he is only one of the seven people 
with whom the poet of seventy-five supposes himself to be 
holding converse in his Parleyings. To most readers, per- 
haps, Gerard de Lairesse, Charles Avison, George Bubb 
Dodington, Bernard de Mandeville, and Daniel Bartoli are 
little more than names ; but with Browning the Flemish 
painter, the Newcastle musician, the eighteenth-century 
politician, the anglicized Dutchman, and the Italian Jesuit 
historian, were all ** men whose works connected themselves 
with the intellectual sympathies and the imaginative pleasures 
of his very earliest youth." ^ For example, Browning's father, 
as has been mentioned, had desired to be an artist, and among 
his books was the second English. edition, that of 1778, of The 
Art of Pai7iting in all its Branches, by Gdrard de Lairesse. 
On the fly-leaf of this volume Browning made the following 
note : — 

" I read this book more often and with greater delight when I 
was a child than any other : and still remember the main of it most 

' Mrs. Orr in her Hamiiook, p. 339, stated on Browning's authority. 



10 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

gratefully for the good I seem to have got from the prints and 
wonderful text." 

This note was made in 1874, thirteen years before 
the appearance of the Parleyings^ in which he speaks of 
de Lairesse as 

" the man I loved 
Because of that prodigious book he wrote 
On Artistry's Ideal." 

The English translation of the Groot Schilderboek of the 
Flemish artist may reasonably be called a "prodigious 
book " with its two substantial quarto volumes, its five 
hundred pages of solid technical matter, and its seventy 
purely technical illustrations. Is it not significant that this, 
the accepted text-book ^ of two or three generations of art 
students in Europe, should be the favourite reading in child- 
hood of the future poet of Andrea del Sarto and Fra Lippo 
Lippif It became, indeed, sadly true in regard to this 
volume, as to much else, that 

" Bearded experience bears not to be duped 
Like boyish fancy," 

yet the memorable " Walk " which de Lairesse described 
with so much elaboration in his two closing chapters on 
Landscape ^ — 

" ' Walk,' come what come may, 

No measurer of steps on this our globe 
Shall ever match for marvels," 

not only delighted Browning as a boy, but so far retained 
its fascination for " bearded experience " that the poet 
of seventy-five matched it in his Parleyings with his own 
splendid description of another imaginary walk. But to 
the student of Browning it is of far greater interest to con- 
nect the boy's delight in the imaginary walk in the company 

* As late as 1817 W. M, Craig, a painter to the Queen, in editing a new edition, 
wrote, " I have repeatedly recommended it in my lectures at the Royal Institution 
as the best work on art that my auditors could consult. " 

* Book VI. deals with Landscape, Chapter XVI. is of the " Painter-like 
Beauty in the Open Air " ; Chapter XVII,, " Of things Deformed and Broken, 
falsely called ' Painter-like. ' " These are illustrated by a walk in which 
appropriate objects are supposed to be seen. 



THE DULWICH GALLERY It 

of de Lairesse among tombs, temples, monuments, and other 
paraphernalia of the pseudo-classical school, with the oft- 
repeated "green half-hour's walk" across the meadows 
between Camberwell and Dulwich in company with his 
father, past hedges and stiles, ivy-covered cottages, and the 
homely but genuine village pound and stocks. For Browning, 
it must be remembered, was " a young wonder " at drawing, 
and it is a significant coincidence that the very year in which 
his father proudly wrote '* R. B. cBtat. two years and three 
months'^ beneath a little picture of a "certain cottage and 
rocks in lead pencil and black currant-juice — paint being 
rank poison, as they said when I sucked my brushes " — was 
the year in which the Dulwich Picture Gallery was opened. 

It is difficult, after nearly a century has passed, to realize 
the importance of thus making accessible to the Londoner of 
1 8 14 the gift of Sir Francis Bourgeois. The National 
Gallery did not exist ; Trafalgar Square itself was undreamt 
of. Mr. Angerstein's collection of thirty-eight pictures, the 
nucleus of the present national collection, was not bought by 
the nation until ten years later, and for fourteen years after 
its purchase it still remained in the ill-lighted rooms of the 
collector's private house in Pall Mall ; not till April, 1838 — 
i.e. twenty-four years after the opening of the Dulwich col- 
lection — was the present National Gallery thrown open. 
Dulwich was thus, during the early years of the nineteenth 
century, the chief English public picture gallery. Not only 
was it a novelty to view pictures in a building specially con- 
structed for their reception, but the Dulwich collection 
attracted attention by reason of the representative character 
of the three hundred and fifty paintings it contained ; for 
these included examples of the Dutch, French, Spanish, 
Italian, and English schools. The Brownings lived but two 
miles from Dulwich : what wonder that the art-loving father 
of the poet was always well supplied with the tickets then 
necessary for admission ? What wonder that Browning 
wrote of Dulwich as the " gallery I so love and am so grateful 
to, having been used to going there when a child far under 
the age [fourteen] allowed by the regulations " ? And is it 
not noticeable in connection with his subsequent sympathetic 
interpretation of pictures and painters, that he added, " I 



12 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

have sate before one, some one of those pictures I had pre- 
determined to see, a good hour, and then gone away"? If, 
therefore, for the general pubh'c the importance of the Dul- 
wich Gallery has diminished, as certainly, for the student of 
Browning, its importance remains. It was this gallery, in 
conjunction with the work of de Lairesse, which bred and 
nurtured in the future poet his intense interest in the sister- 
art of painting. 

Rossetti described Browning's father as having " a real 
genius for drawing — but caring for nothing in the least 
except Dutch boors," and as late as 1842 Mrs. Jameson could 
speak of the Dulwich Gallery as " the only collection freely 
accessible to the public which affords an opportunity of 
studying the Dutch masters." The landscapes of Cuyp and 
others did not attract the father : his favourite English 
artist was Hogarth, of whose works he had a capital collection 
of prints ; and, among Dutch artists, he admired " Brouwer, 
Ostade, Teniers — he would turn from the Sistine altar-piece 
to these," said his son. And even to-day these artists are 
represented at Dulwich as they are represented in no other 
English public gallery ; indeed, the " Interior of an Ale- 
house" (No. 108), by the hard-drinking Adrian Brouwer, is 
said to be unsurpassed in any of our public galleries. Of 
Adrian Ostade there are four examples ; of the Teniers, 
father and son, twenty-two. Browning himself is said, 
during his school days, to have been fond of " making pen- 
and-ink caricatures, which he did very cleverly," and when 
reminded of the fact in later years he remembered it, and 
remarked that he "had always envied the life of an artist."* 
This temporary tendency to caricature would seem to have 
been due to the influence of his father, of whom Reuben 
Browning wrote : — 

" His caricatures were of so amusing a nature that it is surprising 
and to be regretted that so few of them were made public. Their 
extraordinary merit is enhanced by the manner and rapidity with 
which they were produced. Generally speaking, they were the work 
of a moment : at a party, perhaps, when any public or private topic 

* With this remark, however, it is well to compare the passage from Pauline 
quoted in the next chapter, p. 30, 



HIS FATHER'S SKETCHES 13 

of the day engrossed attention, forthwith with slips of paper and 
pencil at hand he issued scores of sketches illustrative of the subject, 
to which his never-failing satire attached some witty explanation, 
sure to excite the admiration and risible faculties of the company." 

These hasty sketches, hundreds of which still remain, are 
usually heads, but more rarely full-length figures ; as a rule 
they are mere graphic outlines, but occasionally they are 
cleverly filled in with washes of sepia or Indian ink. In almost 
all cases they are grotesque : Browning's father could not draw 
a pretty face. If, however, Browning himself ever came under 
the influence of the Dutch school, even for caricatures, it was 
but for a time ; and one would imagine him even as a boy 
marching resolutely past the Dutch pictures in the first two 
rooms of the Dulwich gallery to sit down before the paintings 
he mentioned to Miss Barrett in 1846 — "those two Guides, 
the wonderful Rembrandt's ' Jacob's Vision,' such a Watteau, 
the triumphant three Murillo pictures, a Giorgione music- 
lesson group, all the Poussins with the ' Armida ' and 
'Jupiter's nursing.'" In this list there is but one Dutch 
picture, and that is not of the school of Ostade and Teniers. 
Modern critics look coldly and more than sceptically upon 
the so-called Rembrandt with its dimly lighted figure of the 
patriarch below and the " bird-like " angels in the glow of 
light above, but in earlier days it was indeed held to be 
" wonderful." Hazlitt spoke of it with rapture, and Mrs. 
Jameson knew " nothing more wild, visionary, and poetical." ^ 
The "Fete Champ^tre" (No. 167)— "such a Watteau"— 
remains an excellent example of the peculiar style of that 
French painter ; and although, in the days when Hazlitt was 
teaching the public that " no one ever told a story half so 
well" on canvas as Poussin, the sixteen paintings by that 
master attracted more attention than they now do, yet it is 
true even to-day that one can study Poussin to better advan- 
tage at Dulwich than at Trafalgar Square, and that the 
" Rinaldo and Armida " (No. 238) and its pendant, " The 
infant Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea " (No. 234), are, 

* It may be hazardous, but one can hardly resist the temptation of regarding 
this once famous picture as having consciously or unconsciously played a part in 
the evolution of Browning's well-known lines on the " Lyric love." — W. H. G. 



14 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

as they were to Browning, pictures of note. But, from the 
very first, three Murillo pictures out of the ten by that painter 
were acknowledged to be " triumphant " — the gems of the 
gallery; not the much retouched "Madonna del Rosario " 
(No. 281) of the fifth room, but the "Spanish Flower-girl" 
(No. 199), with its mellow browns and yellows, and the two 
splendid groups of Spanish peasant boys, Nos. 222 and 224, 
the latter of which Hazlitt declared to be not only the 
" triumph of the collection," but " almost of painting." Of 
Italian pictures, with which he was to become so familiar in 
middle life, Browning alludes to the " St. John " (No. 262) and 
to the " St. Sebastian " (No. 268) of Guido Reni, which faced 
one in the distance on entering the gallery ninety years ago 
as they do to-day, and to the Giorgione " Music Lesson," 
now no longer attributed to that painter. 

But, apart from all questions of merit or authenticity, the 
fact remains that it was at Dulwich that Browning first learnt 
to study and interpret painters and pictures. For example, 
after reading in his loved de Lairesse that artist's description 
of the ideal of landscape as a setting for 

" flying shapes, earth stocked with brood 
Of monsters — centaurs bestial, satyrs lewd, — 
Not without much Olympian glory, shapes 
Of god or goddess in their gay escapes," 

he himself has told how his youthful piety obtained somewhat 
dubious satisfaction by making acquaintance with the artist- 
work of this unfortunate painter ; and such acquaintance 
began with the " Pan and Syrinx " (No. 179) and the "Apollo 
and Daphne" (No. 176) at Dulwich. It was at Dulwich that 
the Raphael of Browning's One Word More first became to 
him, if only through the figures of two saints from a predella,* 
something more than a name among painters. At Dulwich 
he first became acquainted with the Guercino of his Guardian 
Angel, and with the Tizian and Giorgione who appear in 
his In a Gondola ; nay, that the name of a painter so rare 
and so little known as Bartolomeo Schedone is introduced 

* No. 241. 



"THE BANDSMAN AVISON" 15 

into the latter poem is simply due to the fact that Browning 
had seen it as a boy beneath two pictures at Dulwich. 
Here, too, Browning first saw a Madonna by Andrea del 
Sarto ; and even " florid old rogue Albano " and the Carlo 
" Maratta who paints Virgins so," of whom he was to make 
such effective and dramatic use fifty years later in The Ring 
and the Book, became familiar to him in his teens in the 
collection of Sir Francis Bourgeois. 

The volumes of de Lairesse abound in references to 
painters, and by way of commentary Browning had Vasari's 
Lives and Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters — from the 
latter of which most of his early knowledge of the history of 
art was gained ^ — as well as the abundant learning of his 
father, who, as we have seen, "had ever to communicate some 
interesting fact not generally known " about both poets and 
painters. With the Notizie of Filippo Baldinucci it does not 
seem that Browning became familiar until his residence in 
Florence : its influence certainly is not marked until the 
appearance of Fra Lippo Lippi in 1855, and not avowed 
until the Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial in the 
Pacchiarotto volume of 1876. 

If the name of Gerard de Lairesse is thus to be associated 
with Browning's early education in art, that of " Charles 
Avison, organist in Newcastle," with whom he also held an 
imaginary parleying in 1887, may be associated with his 
life-long interest in music. Avison is doubtless now re- 
membered, if remembered at all, by the familiar air adapted 
from one of his old-fashioned concertos by Thomas Moore for 
his well-known Sacred Song, "Sound the loud timbrel." 
And it was not from the Essay on Musical Expression referred 
to in his poem that Browning first came in touch with " the 
bandsman Avison," although two copies of this little book 
were on his father's shelves. His love of music, which was 
marked even from earliest childhood, came to him from his 
mother, a sympathetic and accomplished musician who loved 
to sit at the piano in the gloaming when, perhaps, amid the 
gathering darkness, the spell of music is most subtle and 
most potent : and one of his earliest memories was of her 

* Browning used the 1805 edition, revised by Henry Fuseli. The influence of 
Pilkington is plainly traceable in his work. 



i6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

playing Avison's once popular Grand March in C Major, 

which 

" timed in Georgian years 
The step precise of British Grenadiers." 

This was in the days ere his little " hand could stretch an 
octave;" and seventy years later the memory of his early 
love led him to print the music of this simple march from an 
old manuscript copy, at the end of his Parleying. 

Avison, however, was but one and not at all the most 
important of the early musical influences upon Browning. 
Abel, a pupil of Moscheles, was his instructor in technique/ 
and he was also, as he mentions in his Parleying, " an all- 
unworthy pupil " of 

" Great John Relfe, 
Master of mine, learned, redoubtable." 

John Relfe, musician in ordinary to his Majesty, was the 
son of one who for fifty years had officiated as organist at 
Greenwich Hospital, and was himself reputed to be among 
the best teachers of the pianoforte in London. He was, 
moreover, a composer and a writer upon musical theory, and 
as he lived in Church Row, Camberwell — close to St. Giles' 
Church — it was all the more natural that Browning should be 
among his pupils. 

It was from the learned author of the Principles of 
Harniotiy, of Lucidtis Ordo — " an attempt to divest thorough- 
bass and composition of their intricacies " — and other works, 
that Browning gained that knowledge of musical theory 
which helped him to set songs to music, to compose fugues, 
and emboldened him, before he was twenty-one, to con- 
template writing an opera ! " I was studying the grammar 
of music," said Browning, in later life, " when most children 
are learning the multiplication table, and I know what I am 
talking about when I speak of music." ^ 

It was John Relfe with his " Mu-schedula " or music 

' It was of him that Browning, in later life, told the following story : " Yes," 
Abel said to him, "I am in love; it destroys my appetite, interferes with my 
sleep, and considerably breaks in upon my practising ! " (Wise, Letters from 
R. B., vol. ii. p. 72). 

- From the record of a conversation with Mrs. Ireland, communicated by her 
to the Manchester Examiner and Times of i8 December, 1889. 



HIS LIFE-LONG LOVE OF MUSIC 17 

scroll who claimed to teach Browning and his other pupils 
" not only Thorough Bass, but the whole arcana of the science, 
so as completely to analyze any regular composition." And 
the influence of this learned, redoubtable contrapuntist is 
seen combined with that of "the bandsman Avison," the 
writer on musical expression, in lines so technical as those 
which describe the emotion of the lovers as they listen in 
Venice to Galuppi playing upon the harpsichord : — 

•' What ? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh 
on sigh, 
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions — 

' must we die ? ' 
Those commiserating sevenths — * Life might last ! we can but try ! ' " 

From the days when as a mere child he stole downstairs 
from bed to listen to his mother at the piano, and, as she 
ceased, flung himself into her arms, whispering, amid sobs, 
" Play, play," until the days when he drew music from the 
organ at Vallombrosa, or charmed his intimate friends with 
his improvisations on the piano, or wrote Abt Vogler, Master 
Hugues of Saxe-Gotha and A Toccata of Galuppi, and became 
the friend of Joachim and Clara Schumann, Browning 
remained a music-lover. At Asolo, during the last months 
of his life, he would sit in the little loggia of his friend 
Mrs. Bronson, and in the gathering twilight would discourse 
old-time melodies upon the little tinkling spinet which his 
hostess had provided for his pleasure ; with perchance a 
thought of the days when his loved mother used to play in 
the gloaming among the trees and flowers of Camberwell, 
in the land where the thrush sings " at the bent spray's edge." 

That Browning in early life read the Diary of that now- 
forgotten, self-seeking eighteenth-century time-server, George 
Bubb Dodington, is in itself of slight importance. What is 
of importance is that the two copies of this work which stood 
on the bookshelves of Southampton Street may be accepted 
as an indication of the fact that those shelves were crowded 
with historical works. Browning's father was an intense 
student of history, and even when he was an old man of 
nearly eighty-five, his son declared : " The other day, when 
I wanted some information about a point of mediaeval 
c 



i8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

history " — it was in connexion with The Ring and the Book — 
" he wrote a regular bookful of notes and extracts thereabout." 
This inquiry and the ready response with which it met are 
typical both of the father and of the son. It was from his 
encyclopaedic father that Browning inherited a taste for 
out-of-the-way learning and out-of-the-way people, and that 
bias which led him instinctively to deal with a real Paracelsus 
or Sordello, and with a real " Roman murder case." Indeed, 
when he came to define the creative power of the poet, he 
declared 

" That, although nothing which had never life 
Shall get life from him, be, not having been, 
Yet, something dead may get to live again." 

It would, however, be an utter mistake to conceive of 
Browning at any period of his life as a literary or historical 
antiquary ; his varied knowledge came to him in the most 
natural way. He read extensively among the historical works 
in his father's library, and thus unconsciously developed that 
tendency toward historical accuracy which is so singularly 
combined in him with imaginative power. Yet it is not 
without significance that through the influence of the French 
friend who is said to have suggested Paracelsus Browning 
was made, in the very year in which that poem was published, 
a member of the Institut Historiqtie of France : and that 
within six months of the appearance of this poem he was 
helping his new friend, John Forster, to complete his prose 
Life of Strafford} Not to speak of Sordello and its well- 
known familiarity with what George Eliot happily terms 
" those hidden lakelets of knowledge in the high mountains 
far removed from the vulgar eye, only visited by the soaring 
birds of love," there is manifest in The Ring and the Book 
a wide knowledge of the social, political, religious, and 
artistic history of the period to which the story refers ; and 
Browning's father was not the only one whom he consulted 
as to the accuracy of the details of his poem. He actually 
communicated with the Astronomer Royal concerning the 
phases of the moon in the year 1697 before he would insert 

* Information from Miss Browning puts this matter beyond dispute ; none the 
less, the completed work is Forster's, not Browning's. 



MANDEVILLE AND "FIFINE" 19 

the words of Caponsacchi to Pompilia with regard to their 
flight on April 22 of that year : — 

" Leave this house in the dark to-morrow night, 
Just before daybreak : — there's new moon this eve — 
It sets, and then begins the sohd black." ^ 

The Fable of the Bees, by Bernard de Mandeville, that 
daring, outspoken contemporary of Swift and Addison, was 
condemned by the Grand Jury of Westminster in 1723 as 
"having a direct tendency to the subversion of all religion 
and civil government, our duty to the Almighty, our love to 
our country, and regard to our oaths " ; and yet, this so-called 
"dangerous and immoral " book, the title-page of which boldly 
declared "private vices public benefits" was presented to 
Browning by his father on Friday, i February, 1833 — three 
months before his majority. As the influences of Browning's 
home were strongly religious, this is the more suggestive. 
His father had, after his custom, annotated the volume, and 
he evidently had scant sympathy with the views of the 
Westminster Jury; so had Browning. Mandeville forthwith 
became "my fine fellow"; and when, in 1887, Browning 
wrote his Parleying, he actually so far identified himself with 
the much abused author, that he made him the mouthpiece 
of his own views in an argument on speculative matters with 
one who represents Carlyle. Browning evidently accepted 
Mandeville's various Vindications of his work — these were 
included in the copy given him by his father — and it would 
seem probable that these Vindications were not without 
influence upon the evolution of his own later defences of a 
Blougram and a Sludge : while his avowed admiration for 
Mandeville's power of making " a case " can hardly be dis- 
sociated from that striking example of his own powers in the 
same direction which is furnished in Fifine at the Fair, 

Yet another name connected with the Parleyings is that 
of Daniel Bartoli. Browning himself felt that this name at 
least would be so unfamiliar to his readers that he added a 
footnote to explain that Bartoli was a "Jesuit and the 
historian of that Order." To this footnote, which is in 
Italian, is affixed the name of Angelo Cerutti ; and it was 

* So he informed Lord Courtney of Penwith, in a letter dated 14 May, 1881. 



20 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

he who brought the works of BartoH to Browning's notice. 
Born in the Milanese, Angelo Cerutti became, like so many 
of his countrymen, an Italian in England ; he gave lessons 
in his native tongue in London, and his dwelling was at 
Camberwell. Having returned to Italy, he published an 
autobiography, in which he mentions that while teaching at 
the school of the Misses Goodson at Camberwell he had as a 
pupil a young lady named Browning " ben fornito d'intelletto," 
with black eyes and hair and a complexion so dark that she 
seemed Italian rather than English.^ For his English pupils, 
among whom was Browning as well as his sister, Cerutti 
prepared an Italian grammar ; and as, during the early part 
of the nineteenth century, Daniel Bartoli was being pro- 
claimed by the poet Monti and others, " the purest and one 
of the greatest prose writers of Italy," Cerutti also prepared 
for his pupils an edition of the Simboli^ which he considered 
one of the three best works by Bartoli. In the list of sub- 
scribers for this reprint appear the names of " Robert 
Browning, Esquire," then aged eighteen, and of his sister ; 
and it was from the preface to this book that Browning 
selected the footnote for his Parleying, For years the 
Simholi formed his favourite reading, and partly on account 
of its contents, partly on account of the purity of its style, he 
took it with him to Italy in 1838 ; and thus it happened that 
upon the cover of this octavo volume he wrote in pencil 
during the voyage his Good News from Ghent and Home 
Thoughts fro7n the Sea. 

The books and writers of the Parleyings of 1887 are, 
therefore, indicative of much in the early life and training of 
Browning ; but perhaps no single volume in his father's 
collection played such an important part in stimulating his 
early love for the odds and ends of learning as that fascinat- 
ing storehouse of fact and fancy, The Wonders of the Little 
Worlds by the seventeenth-century Coventry divine, Nathaniel 
Wanley, father of the well-known antiquary.^ This book, 

* Vita da lui scritia, 1846, vol. i. p. 332. "Con occhi e capelli neri e color 
bruno, ella pareva piu presto italiana che inglese." 

' De' Simboli Transporlati al morale dal P. Danielo Bartoli edizione coretta e 
emendata da Angelo Ceruiti, Londra [1830?]. 

^ Wanley, it is clear, remained a life-long favourite with the poet. "See 
how prettily," he writes to Frederick Lehmann in 1873, " the story is told in the 



"THE PIED PIPER" ANTICIPATED 21 

with its thousands of anecdotes illustrating the prodigies of 
human nature, shows omnivorous reading, and upon its 
treasures the father of the poet often drew for the amuse- 
ment of his children. In its pages and in those of the ever- 
delightful Epistol(g Ho-EliancB of Ben Jonson's friend, the 
much-travelled James Howell — one of Thackeray's "bedside 
books " — Browning first read of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. 
The story, however, was familiar to him even before he had 
learned to read, for it was a favourite with his legend-loving 
father, who, devoted as he was to children, versified and 
illustrated the tale with pen and pencil for other small folk 
than those of his own family. One house which he often 
visited was at Hackney, the home of Mr. Earles, who, like 
himself, was in the Bank of England, and the following 
extract from a version of the Pied Piper by Browning's father 
leaves little room for speculation as to whence came the poet's 
tendency to odd rhymes and humorous verse : — 

" There is at a moderate distance from Hanover — 

A town on the Weser of singular fame : 
A place which the French and the rats often ran over — 

But though my tale varies 

Yet sage antiquaries 
Are all in one story concerning its name — 
'Tis HammeUn (but you had better perhaps 
Turn over your atlas and look at the maps) — 

Which, without flattery, 

Seem'd one vast rattery ; 
Where the rats came from no mortal could say — 

But for one put to flight 

There were ten the next night; — 
And for ten over night, there were twenty next day : — 

With double the number perhaps the next morning — 

In vain did the lodgers and tenants give warning — 
And declared that unless they were driven away — 

The rats and taxation 

Would bring on starvation — 
And they wouldn't stay to be famished — not they ! " ^ 

good old style of Wanley, 1677." The story is the familiar one of the young man 
who bore a striking resemblance to Augustus. 

' This version ends abruptly, after about sixty lines, with the following note : 
" I began this not knowing that Robert had written on this subject ; having heard 



22 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Browning, it will be remembered, called his own poem "a 
child's story," for it was written for a boy of ten, little 
Willie Macready, the son of the actor. It was natural, when 
asked for some verses for the sick child to illustrate, that 
he should instinctively think of the legend he himself had 
enjoyed since childhood, a legend, moreover, which his own 
father's sketches had taught him was so well suited for varied 
and graphic illustration. 

But the influence of Nathaniel Wanley is by no means 
confined to the Pied Piper ; it can be traced from the Pauline 
of 1833 to the Asolando volume of 1889. It seems strange, 
for instance, to the ordinary reader, to encounter at the 
beginning of a poem by a youth of twenty a long extract in 
Latin from a work by so unfamiliar a person as that German 
occult philosopher of the sixteenth century, Heinrich Cornelius 
Agrippa. But Browning had had his youthful imagination 
stimulated by reading in Wanley how the magician Agrippa 
could cause an evil spirit to enter into the body of a dead 
man and make it seem alive ;^ and how Agrippa himself "was 
ever accompanied with a devil in the shape of a black dog 
which on his death-bed he dismissed with the words, Abi^ 
perdita bestia, qucs vie perdidisti : ' Begone thou wretched 
beast which hast utterly undone me. ' " ^ When, therefore, he 
found among his father's books a little octavo volume lettered 
//. Corn. Agrippa. Opera^ he doubtless pounced upon it 
eagerly ; nor would his interest be lessened by the fact that 
his father had made a note on the fly-leaf to say that the 
book had once formed part of the library of so attractive an 
occult philosopher as Sir Kenelm Digby. From this volume, 
then, he borrowed his preface to Pauline. Paracelsus, again, 
seems an odd subject for a young man of three-and-tvventy 
to select for his first acknowledged poem ; but the anecdotes 

him mention it, I stopped short. I never saw his manuscript till some weeks 
afterward. R. B., 2nd March, 1843." This note was evidently added some time 
after the lines were written, for Browning's poem was published in November, 
1842 ; possibly this publication suggested the note. At a later date the father was 
bold enough to complete his version by the addition of some two hundred lines, 
so that it assumed about the same proportions as that of his son. 

' Wonders of the Little World, ed. 1806, vol. ii. p. 270, § 18. 

* Ibid. 

' The first volume, at least, was there ; and doubtless the others also. 



THE STOREHOUSE OF WANLEY 23 

in Wanley had made the name of the Swiss physician familiar 
to Browning almost from the days of the nursery, and his 
father "was completely versed in mediaeval legend and 
seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Tal- 
mudic personages, personally." ^ Added to which, Browning, 
as he glanced at the bookshelves, would see beside the folio 
edition of Fuller and the 1692 folio of Bunyan, three folio 
volumes, upon the title-page of which he would read, Aur. 
Philip. Theoph. Paracelsi Bombast, ab Hohenheim medici et 
philosophi celeberrimiy Chemicorumque Principis, Opera omnia ;^ 
and opposite the title-page of the first volume he would be 
confronted with the face of Paracelsus himself — an engraving 
from the portrait which Tintoretto had painted ad vivum the 
year before Paracelsus died. 

It was in Wanley, too, that Browning met with odd names, 
such as Schafnaburgensis,^ which he used in 1842 in the title 
of one of his two poems called Garden Fancies ; and it was 
in Wanley that he read of the " prestigious feats almost 
incredible " of " Johannes Teutonicus, a Canon of Halberstadt 
in Germany," who reappears in Transcendentalism among 
the Men and Women of 1855 as the "stout mage" John of 
Halberstadt who "vents a brace of rhymes," and forthwith 
the roses spring up "over us, under, round us every side." 
It was in Wanley * that he read as a boy how " Pope Stephen 
the Seventh, having been hindered from the Popedom by 
Formosus, his predecessor, when after his death he was made 
Pope, caused his fingers to be cut off, and to be cast into 
the river for the fish to devour " ; and this incident, which 
Browning's father used to relate to his children as they sat 
upon his knee, afterwards became the theme of the first 
hundred and fifty lines of the Pope's noble speech in The 
Ring and the Book. Nor does the influence of Wanley cease 
in 1869 with The Ring and the Book ; twenty years later in 
Asolando, the last volume Browning published, appeared the 
lines called The Cardinal and the Dog, which tell how, at 

* W. Sharp's Brcnvning, p. 19. 

» This was the 1658 Geneva edition, the best, by F. Bitiskius, from whom 
Browning quotes so freely in the notes to his poem. 
' That is, a native of Aschafenburg. 

* Wanley, Wonders of the Little World, vol. ii. p, 37, § 9, cd. 1806. 



24 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the Council of Trent, Cardinal Crescentio sat writing letters, 
when 

" A black dog of vast bigness, eyes flaming, ears that hung 
Down to the very ground almost, into the chamber sprung 
And made directly for him, and laid himself right under 
The table where Crescentio wrote — who called in fear and wonder 
His servants in the ante-room, commanded everyone 
To look for and find out the beast ; but, looking, they found none." 

In regard to which incident Browning declares, " I give mine 
Author's very words : he penned, I reindite." How far this 
is the case may be judged from the following from "mine 
Author," Wanley : — 

*' Crescentius the Pope's Legate at the Council of Trent 1552, 
March 25, was busie writing of Letters to the Pope till it was far in 
the night, whence rising to refresh himself, he saw a black dog of 
a vast bigness, flaming eyes, ears that hung down almost to the 
ground enter the room, which came directly towards him, and laid 
himself down under the table. Frightened at the sight, he called 
his Servants in the Anti-chamber [sic], commanded them to look for 
the Dog, but they could find none. The Cardinal fell melancholy, 
thence sick, and died at Verona : on his death-bed he cryed out to 
drive away the Dog that leaped upon his bed." ^ 

These lines, however, although not published till 1889, 
were written in 1842 for little Willie Macready, at the same 
time as the Pied Pipe ^ ; but there is a later example of the 
survival of the influence of Wanley to be mentioned. In 
1883 Browning's Jocoseria appeared, the name being taken 
from " such rubbish as Melander's Jccoserial' as that volume 
had been termed in a note to Paracelsus ; for, like the works 
of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, Otto Melander's dumpy 
little Latin volume of eleven hundred pages of seventeenth- 
century jest and anecdote was on the bookshelves at 
Southampton Street. Browning, having been taken to task 
for his literary shortcomings, replied to his critics at the close 
of his volume of 1883, and the reply was in the form of a 
metrical version of an anecdote from Wanley : — 

" Pambo came to a learned man, and desired him to teach him 

* Wanley, p. 61 1, ed. 1678. Browning, by mistake, gives the date of the 
Council of Trent as 1522 instead of 1552, 



A BOOKISH CHILDHOOD 25 

some Psalm : he began to read to him the thirty-ninth, and the first 
verse, which is : * I said I will look to my ways, that I offend not 
with my tongue.' Pambo shut the book, and look his leave, saying, 
' he would learn that point.' And having absented himself some 
months, he was demanded by his teacher, *When he would go 
forward ? ' He answered, ' That he had not yet learned his old 
lesson — to speak in such a manner as not to offend with his 
tongue.' " ^ 

Browning in 1883 genially saluted his forerunner as a 
brother — "Arcades umbo sumus^* ; for fifty years he said, in 
substance, I have done my best — 

" Yet much the same 
Offend with my tongue — like Pambo ! " 

It is singular, therefore, that Wanley's curious book has 
been consistently neglected by students of Browning. They 
have also overlooked the Biographic Universelle which he so 
freely consulted. Browning quotes from its pages in his 
Note to Paracelsus, he used it for Sordello, he took from it 
the subject of his proposed tragedy of Narses^ it helped him 
to King Victor and King Charles, and it suggested the idea 
of The Return of the Druses. One would almost surmise that 
he had read its fifty volumes through. 

Such are some of the influences of the Camberwell home 
upon Browning. As an infant he was hushed to sleep by his 
father to the words of an ode by Anacreon,^ hummed to the 
tune of The Cottage in tJie Wood. As a child of five he was 
interested in the Tale of Troy ^ by a father who, as a school- 
boy, had learnt by heart the first book of the Iliad, and had 
waged Homeric battles in the playground at Cheshunt with 
his schoolfellow, John Kenyon. And in a copy of an early 
eighteenth-century edition of Dryden's translation of the 
satires of Juvenal, Browning made the following note : "My 

' Wanley, bk. iii., ch, iv., § lo, p. 227, ed. 1806, vol. i. 

* Five months after his father's death Browning wrote on the title-page of a 
1783 Glasgow edition of Anacreontis et Sapphoiiis carmina, the words " My 
father's schoolbook. Robert Browning, Nov. 5, 1866," He himself had used it, 
for it also bears his signature dated 1826. 

* Cf. his lines Development, in the Asolando volume, the details of which, 
however, must not to be taken literally. " The description in the Troy poem was 
entirely fanciful." [Note by Miss Browning, 1903.] 



26 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

father read the whole of the Dedicatory Preface aloud to me 
as we took a walk together up Nunhead Hill, Surrey, when 
I was a boy." Verily, the hundred pages of the Essay on 
Satire formed substantial reading for a boy during a country 
walk! 

Browning, in early manhood, declared that he could 
"forget nothing — but names and the date of the battle of 
Waterloo." Thus gifted, and with influences such as have 
been here indicated around him from his childhood, what 
wonder that John Kenyon should speak of his " inexhaustible 
knowledge ; " or that the historian Kinglake, after spending 
a few days with him in a country house with a large library, 
should come away " quite astounded " at the versatility of his 
learning ? 



CHAPTER II 
BOYHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 

Browning's home at Camberwell — Changes in the locality — His 
schooldays at Peckham — Lisping in numbers — Dislike of Mr. Ready's 
school — A "poet-biography" — Browning's dramatic instinct— Inherits 
his mother's love of animals, birds and flowers — The lion of the Surrey 
Gardens — " A principle of restlessness." 

A HUNDRED years ago Dowlas Lane wound snake- 
like through the fields from the Walworth Road 
to that which united Camberwell Green and the 
village of Peckham. Walworth, now one of the most 
densely populated districts of London, then had its Manor 
House with spacious and lordly grounds — ere long to 
be transformed into the Surrey Gardens. At the familiar 
" Elephant and Castle," where the Walworth Road begins, 
one listened to the note of the coach-horn as the horses 
cantered along the New Kent Road on their way from the 
"Golden Cross," of Pickwickian fame, towards Dover. Wal- 
worth Road had then its trim grass plots and well-kept 
houses, and its toll-bar at Camberwell Gate, whence were 
visible the whirring sails of a windmill among the trees 
toward Camberwell Green : and midway between the turn- 
pike gate and the village green was the entrance to Dowlas 
Lane. 

Halfway along this lane was the little Dowlas Common 
with its trees and shrubs ; close at hand was Dowlas Farm ; 
further on, towards the Peckham Road, overhung by trees, 
was the quaint old wooden inn, the " Rosemary Branch," 
whose swinging sign and ample grounds were known for 
miles around by all lovers of cricket and field sports. But 
almost with the opening of the century ungainly two-storied 
little terraces, happily half hidden by trees, began to creep 
like devouring caterpillars along the lane, and comely h'ttle 



28 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

detached and semi-detached houses, with flower gardens in 
front and strawberry-beds and fruit trees in the rear, sprang 
up to take the place of hedges, until in the days of Browning's 
boyhood the little Common, or Cottage Green as it came to 
be called, was nearly all that remained to break the continuity 
of the homesteads, and Dowlas Lane became transformed 
into Southampton Street. 

It was in Southampton Street, near the little Common, 
that Robert Browning was born,^ and in Southampton Street 
he lived for eight and twenty years. But this was in the 
days when he could still watch the white-throat and the 
swallow building their nests ; when he could still listen, 
like Keats at Hampstead, to the song of the nightingale and 
to the note of " the wise thrush " as it sang " each song twice 
over," and when he could still look out across fields " rough 
with hoary dew " or gay with buttercups, and see 

" That the lowest bough and the brush-wood sheaf 
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough." 

The Southampton Street of to-day is for the most part a 
much-decayed or cheaply rebuilt, poverty-stricken street in 
an overcrowded district. The birthplace of the poet has 
vanished. A second home has also vanished. Hanover 
Cottage, his home for sixteen years, has likewise perished. 
It may, however, afford a dubious satisfaction to the student 
of Browning to know that if he will but take his stand at the 
corner of Sedgmoor Place and look across Southampton 
Street toward Coleman Road, the houses or shops now 
numbered 173 and 175 occupy approximately the site of the 
home in which Browning was first thrilled by the poetry of 
Keats and Shelley, and in which he wrote Pauline, Para- 
celsus, and Pippa Passes, as well as Sordello, King Victor and 
King Charles and The Return of tJie Druses? 

' "R. B. was born in a house in Southampton Street, pulled down long ago. 
I was an infant when we went to another house, also in Southampton Street, 
where we lived till we moved to Hanover Cottage. I do not remember the precise 
date ; I was then about ten years old. Hanover Cottage, just built, was a semi- 
detached house with a garden behind and trees in front of it." [Note by Miss 
Browning, born 1S14, aged ten in 1S24.] 

- The Cottage Green, or Common, which adjoined Wells Street on the north 
side of Southampton Street, has now been built upon, but the n.ime still remains ; 




^ 5 






H 5 
O 



MR. READY'S SCHOOL 29 

Some aspects of the influence of this home upon the 
development of Browning have already been traced, and it 
has been stated that it is thither that one must look for his 
early education, and not to his school. Browning's school- 
days with the Rev. Thomas Ready at Peckham, about a mile 
from his home, do not seem to have been either happy or 
profitable. As a man of sixty he talked them over, in a 
reminiscent mood, with his old friend Alfred Domett, who 
was also Camberwell born, and Domett forthwith made the 
following entry in his Diary [7 February, 1873] : — 

" He says they taught him nothing there, and that he was 
bullied by the big boys. When first there, at eight or nine years of 
age, he says he made a copy of verses which he remembered to this 
day — and " great bosh they were ! " — intended to ingratiate himself 
with the master, a Mr. Ready. He quoted the two concluding 
lines, which ran thus : — 

" We boys are privates in our Regiment's ranks — . 

'Tis to our Captain that we all owe thanks." 

— a compliment to the master, which got him favoured in his school 
exercises for some time, and enabled him to play with impunity 
little impudent tricks, such as shutting the master's lexicon when his 
head was turned away while hearing his class, to give him the 
trouble of hunting up a word again, which would have immediately 
procured any other boy a box on the ear." 

Mr. Ready's school was, it would seem, the descendant 
of that of Dr. Milner,^ in which Goldsmith had been usher, 

all the property between this and Coleman Street — formerly called Grove Lane — 
has been rebuilt and two new streets made. Hanover Cottage had a large garden 
running back to Grove Lane, in which the stable was situated, beyond this were 
other gardens and fields. The neighbouring church of St. George, in "Wells 
Street, then stood in the midst of fields, 

* The site. No. 77, Queen's Road, Peckham, is now occupied by a bank. The 
old house, a large roomy place, was pulled down in 1877 ; it stood just opposite 
Rye Lane and Hanover Chapel, where the Rev. John Milner, D.D., whose usher 
Goldsmith was, preached till his death in 1757. In Browning's days the popular 
Dr. Bengo Collyer occupied the pulpit, and for him the chapel was rebuilt. What 
was called "Goldsmith's house " (pulled down in 1876), was in Goldsmith Street 
close by. Whatever its possible connection with Goldsmith, it was far too small 
to have been occupied by Dr. Milncr's school, and inquiries have only served to 
confirm the tradition that Browning's school was that associated with Goldsmith. 
The school garden and orchard have now been transformed into a yard for Messrs. 
Tilling's omnibuses. 



30 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

and where he met the bookseller Griffith. Two of Domett's 
brothers were schoolfellows of Browning, but not Domett 
himself; John Domett, the elder of these, was six years 
Browning's senior, and therefore probably left school soon 
after the little boy came, nevertheless he distinctly re- 
membered 

"young Browning in a pinafore of brown Holland, such as small 
boys used to wear in those days, for he was always neat in his dress ; 
and how they used to pit him against much older and bigger boys 
in a chaffing match to amuse themselves with the Httle bright-eyed 
fellow's readiness and acuteness of repartee." 

For Browning, even as a child, " was made up of an 
intensest life," and was, as he himself long afterwards 
confessed, ** unluckily precocious," He was, as has been 
stated, " a young wonder at drawing " at the age of two, and 
was known among his schoolfellows for his powers as a 
caricaturist ; his father, for a time at least, seems to have 
had serious hopes that his son would develop into an artist, 
but, as Browning has declared in Pauline — 

" I had 
No wish to paint, no yearning ; but I sang." 

The doggerel lines on Mr. Ready may serve to recall this 
tendency to " song," as well as the fact that Browning, like 
Pope, Elizabeth Barrett, Ruskin, and scores of children 
unknown to fame, composed verses before he could read. 
His first dose of " nasty " physic is said to have been accom- 
panied by the impromptu : 

" Good people all who wish to see 
A boy take physic, look at me." 

Before he was five he could read and write, and although he 
was not, like Ruskin at that age, sending to the Circulating 
Library for second volumes, he was reading books which 
contained scraps from Ossian, which he so enjoyed that he 
set to work to imitate them in the first " composition " of 
which he was ever guilty. His previous efforts he knew 
were nonsense, but this he thought exceedingly well of, and 



OUT OF HIS ELEMENT 31 

laid up for posterity under the cushion of a great armchair.^ 
" I could not have been five years old," he said. Even 
before that age he had been removed from a neighbouring 
dame's school because his proficiency in reading and spelling 
had roused the jealousy of the parents of other pupils ; and 
before he entered, at the age of eight or nine, the preparatory 
school presided over by the Misses Ready — those good 
ladies who used to brush and oil the children's hair once a 
week to the accompaniment of the hymns of Isaac Watts — 
he knew by heart much of Pope's Homer. He remained at 
the Peckham school as a weekly boarder under these sisters, 
and then under their brother, until he was fourteen ; and as 
the years passed, the quick-witted precocious child and, later, 
the growing, rather agressive lad, who was by no means 
deficient in self-confidence, could hardly avoid coming to the 
conclusion that his father was considerably more learned 
than the schoolmaster. The juvenile reader of Wanley, 
De Lairesse and Quarles' Emblems — his " childhood's pet 
book " — would speedily become more than sceptical as to 
whether the library of Mr. Ready contained six thousand 
volumes like that across the fields in Southampton Street, 
and might be quite certain that the reverend gentleman's 
collection of Bibles did not compare favourably with that of 
his father, who could take from his bookshelf a rare 1 568 
Biblia Sacra, which was lacking even from the famous 
collection of eleven hundred editions of the scriptures in the 
library of the Duke of Sussex. Browning's interest there- 
fore continued to centre in his home ; he made few school 
friends, he became intolerant of school ways and of his 
schoolmaster. Seven years after he left school he heard that 
the Rev. Thomas Ready had preached a heavy sermon : 
his instant comment was, 

" A heavy sermon — sure the error's great 
For not a word Tom utters has its weight." 

This impromptu was written in March, 1833, the month, 
that IS, in which Browning's first published poem, Pauline, 

' Letters ofR.B. and E. B. B. 



32 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

appeared, and the account given in Pauline of his school- 
days and of their effect upon him is not flattering : — 

" Long constraint chained down 
My soul till it was changed. I lost myself; 
And were it not that I so loathe that time, 
I could recall how first I learned to turn 
My mind against itself; and the effects 
In deeds for which remorse were vain as for 
The wanderings of delirious dream ; yet thence 
Came cunning, envy, falsehood." 

There is obvious danger in seeking to interpret the 
details of poetry too literally ; readers of Manfred went 
somewhat astray when they reckoned Byron among mur- 
derers ; Julian and Madiialo ■^v&scr\\.s some interesting pitfalls 
for the literal interpreter of Shelley ; and Tennyson has 
taken care to warn his readers that /« Memoriam, full as it 
is of personal history, is, nevertheless, " a poem and not an 
actual biography." What justification Browning had for his 
self-accusation, and how far this is to be taken literally, 
cannot be exactly determined ; but it would be a great 
mistake to dismiss his avowal as wholly due to the play of 
fancy. Did Mr. Ready object to " cribs," and had not Uncle 
Reuben given his nephew Smart's translation of Horace ? 
Might not some measure of "cunning" be advisable when 
the young caricaturist and writer of epigrams was at work ; 
for what schoolboy would spare his masters "i Were all 
Browning's early verses written out of school hours ? Was 
Mr. Ready, as scholastic Lord Chamberlain, made aware of 
the various plays little Browning wrote, and did he sanction 
the theatrical troupe the boy organized for their production ? 
Was he, or were those at home, informed of a certain visit 
after sundown to the loved elms on the Camberwell hilltop, 
when the boy was spellbound as he first saw London by night 
with its recently installed gas-lamps ; or was this, the first of 
many nocturnal rambles, like Wordsworth's moonlight row 
on Esthwaite Water, "an act of stealth and troubled 
pleasure ? " However this may be, there is no doubt as to 
Browning's attitude toward his school. Seven or eight 
years after the production of Pauline, as he was passing the 



"A POET-BIOGRAPHY" 33 

old playground and orchard with his friend Domett, Brown- 
ing spoke of the " disgust with which he always thought of > 
the place," and quoted an epigram he had made years before 
expressive of the " undiluted misery " of the " hapless child- 
hood " he had spent there. Nor was this because the school 
was a Dotheboys Hall and Mr. Thomas Ready a Kentish 
Wackford Squeers. The exact opposite was the case. "I 
know he always disliked being at Mr. Ready's," wrote Miss 
Browning in 1902, " but that was not the fault of the school, 
which was a very good one. He always acknowledged that 
the boys were most liberally and kindly treated." Apart 
from considerations such as have been already suggested, 
there was another and perhaps still more potent influence at 
work ; this was the restraint put upon his imaginative 
faculties, for Browning was, as a boy, possessed of an imagi- 
nation which 

'* Has been an angel to me, coming not 
In fitful visions but beside me ever 
And never failing me." 

This avowal is from Pauline ; and, in spite of his warning 
that this poem was his earliest attempt at poetry, " always 
dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many 
imaginary persons, not mine," it must be accepted in its 
main outlines as distinctly autobiographical, and, if read 
aright, as the most authentic record of his early life. His 
intimate friend Joseph Arnould accurately described Pauline^ 
in 1847, as a 

•' strange, wild, and in parts singularly magnificent poet-bio- 
graphy : his own early life as it presented itself to his own soul : in 
fact, psychologically speaking, his Sartor ^esartus." * 

In Sartor it is possible in all essentials to replace the name 
of Teufelsdrockh by that of Carlyle ; Hinterschlag Gym- 
nasium is but a name for Annan school ; Blumine represents 
a real Margaret Gordon, and the incident of the " Everlasting 
No" becomes none the less real when the reader is aware 
that it is to be associated with Leith walk, and not with " the 
dirty little Rue St. Thomas de I'Enfer " in Paris. And so it 
is with Pauline. 

' Sartor, oddly enough, was, like Pauline, printed in 1833. 



34 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 
When, for instance, Browning speaks of 

" My first dawn of life 
Which passed alone with wisest ancient books," 

he is really speaking of the library at Southampton Street ; 
and when he tells how the unnamed boy of the poem entered 
heart and soul with a child's vivid imagination into the 
legends of which he read, he is also writing autobiography. 
What is related of Walter Scott at the age of six might be 
applied, with one significant alteration, to Browning. Mrs. 
Cockburn described Scott as 

*' the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was 
reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made him read 
on : it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose 'with 
the storm. He lifted his eyes and hands — ' There's the mast gone 1 ' 
says he, ' crash it goes ! — they will all perish ! ' After his agitation, 
he turns to me, — ' That's too melancholy,' says he, ' I had better 
read you something more amusing.' I preferred a little chat, and 
asked him his opinion of Milton and other books he was reading, 
which he gave me wonderfully." 

Both in regard to the perusal of books not usually read by 
boys, and to vividness of imagination, this might have been 
written of Browning as well as of Scott, but whereas Scott, 
the future novelist, saw the scene ab extra^ and exclaimed, 
" They will all perish," Browning, the future dramatic poet, 
would have identified himself with those of whom he was 
speaking, and his instinctive cry would have been, " We shall 
all perish." It was by reason of such imaginative sympathy 
that the Greek legends he so early loved — " those old times 
and scenes where all that's beautiful had birth for me" 
— became 

" All halo-girt with fancies of my own : 
And / myself went with the tale^ 

Vivid imagination is so much the rule among children 
that it would call for no comment in the case of Browning 
were it not for its dramatic intensity and for its duration. 
Coleridge, as a child, used to act over what he had been 
reading, and would cut down " weeds and nettles with a stick 



HIS STRONG DRAMATIC IMPULSE 35 

as one of the seven champions of Christendom," and while 
walking the London streets as a Blue-coat boy, absent- 
mindedly imagined himself to be Leander swimming the 
Hellespont, until his outstretched hand was abruptly seized 
as that of a would-be pickpocket by one with whose coat- 
tails it had accidentally come in contact. But Coleridge, 
during his brief career as a poet, was not dramatic : and in 
later days, when he "sat upon the brow of Highgate Hill," 
he sat there as a Philosopher, as "a kind of Magus girt in 
mystery and enigma." ^ With Browning, however, the 
dramatic impulse, imperfect as it undoubtedly was, remained 
lifelong. The Dramatic Lyrics of 1842 were followed by the 
Dramatic Romances oi 1845, and these again by the Dramatis 
Person<z of 1864 and by the Dramatic Idylls of 1878 and 
1880 ; and these poems are not dramatic in name only, but 
in fact. Pauline, his first published poem, was a dramatic 
monologue ; Paracelsus, his next, he called a " dramatic 
poem " ; Strafford, the third, was an acted drama ; in his 
fourth, Sordello, he reluctantly adopted a narrative form, for 
which, after a dozen lines, he was forced to apologize : — 

" Never, I should warn you first, 
Of my own choice had this, if not the worst 
Yet not the best expedient, served to tell 
A story I could body forth so well 
By making speak, myself kept out of view, 
The very man as he was wont to do." 

And, even after having thus adopted the narrative form, he 
could not keep to it, but repeatedly drifted into dramatic 
monologue. Also, when he came to trace the mental history 
of Sordello, a poet like himself, it was to describe him as 
dramatically identifying himself now with an Este, now with 
an Ecelin ; at one time he is the Emperor Frederick, at 
another a crusader, or even an Apollo. This is evidently but 
a reflex of Browning's own experiences. Nay, so instinctive 
was the dramatic impulse, that in Pippa Passes, the publica- 
tion of which immediately followed that of Sordello, little 
Pippa is represented as finding her greatest joy in spending 

* Cf. Carlyle's description in his Life of Sterling, chap. viii. 



36 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

her only holiday in the whole year in imagining herself to 
be several other people in turn. 

" I may fancy all day — and it shall be so, 
That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names 
Of the happiest four in our Asolo." 

Nor was Browning's early dramatic sympathy limited to 
human beings : it extended even to animal life. From his 
mother he inherited that love of birds and animals for which 
he was remarkable throughout life, just as he inherited from 
her his highly nervous nature, his love of music and of flowers. 
Mrs. Browning we are told, had that 

" extraordinary power over animals of which we hear sometimes, 
but of which I have never known a case so perfect as hers. She 
would lure the butterflies in the garden to her, and domestic 
animals obeyed her as if they reasoned.' " ^ 

Browning inherited something of this power, and even in 
the closing months of his life his soft, low whistle would 
entice the lizards as they basked by the roadside in the 
Italian sunshine, and his keen eye could still detect the 
tiniest inhabitant of the hedges. His pet owl was not un- 
known to visitors at Warwick Crescent ; less familiar were 
his pet geese. These would follow him about like dogs and 
would come and nestle lovingly in his arms ; nor was the 
humour of the situation lost upon Browning, for, after having 
suffered much from the cackle of reviewers, he genially gave 
to his hissing companions the suggestive names of the 
Edinburgh and the Quarterly. As a boy he rode his pony, 
played with his dogs, had his numerous pets — monkeys, 
magpies, and even an eagle ; his pockets were frequently 
full of the uncanny " portable qreatures " for which he had 
such a fancy, frogs, toads, and efts. Possibly, the occasional 
visits of a favourite snake or hedgehog to Mr, Ready's 
may have contributed to the evolution of that schoolboy 
"cunning" to which reference has been made. His half- 
holidays were often spent lying under the elm-trees on the 
hilltop at Camberwell above the village church ^ whence he 

' W. J. Stillman, Autobiography of a Journalist, vol. i. p. 279, 

* This hill was that on which Camberwell Grove is now built. In Browning's 



HIS FACULTY OF OBSERVATION 37 

could look down upon London and beyond to its northern 
heights — to the Hampstead of Keats and the Highgate of 
Coleridge, and to the more distant spire beside which another 
schoolboy, his then much-loved Byron, used to lie on the flat 
tombstone beneath the Harrow elms. Browning would lie 
" beside a hedge or deep in meadow grasses, or under a tree . . . 
and there give himself up so absolutely to the life of the moment 
that even the shy birds would alight close by and sometimes venture- 
somely poise themselves on suspicious wings for a brief space upon 
his recumbent body. I have heard him say that his faculty of 
observation at that time would not have appeared despicable to a 
Seminole or an Iroquois : he saw and watched everything." ^ 

Pippa Passes was conceived and largely composed beneath 
the trees of Dulwich Wood, a favourite haunt of Browning 
from early youth ; and the words of Pippa's song are as true 
of their writer as of the little silk-winder of Asolo. 
*' Overhead the tree-tops meet 

Flowers and grass spring 'neath one's feet ; 

There was nought above me, and nought below 

My childhood had not learned to know ! , 

For what are the voices of birds 

— Ay, and of beasts — but words, our words, 

Only so much more sweet ! 

The knowledge of that with my life began." 

But Browning's imaginative communion with the birds and 
beasts extended at times much further than this would imply, 
as is indicated by some suggestive lines in Pauline : — 
" I have gone in thought 
Thro' all conjuncture, I have lived all life 
When it is most alive. . . . 

... I can mount with the bird 

Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves 

And twisted boughs of some tall mountain-tree. 

Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens ; 

Or like a fish breathe-in the morning air 

In the misty sun-warm water." 

childhood the houses were confined to the Peckham Road end, where Browning's 
friend, Alfred Domett, lived ; gradually the houses crept upward— in one, near the 
middle of the Grove, Mr, Chamberlain was born. 
' William Sharp's Robert Btwinittg^ P< 96. 



38 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

This is simply a more extreme, less permanent, but far 
from rare,^ example of the dramatic impulse ; and Browning, 
in The Glove, which appeared among the Dramatic Lyrics of 
1845, has given a more mature and strikingly artistic example 
of the same tendency. During the poet's boyhood foot- 
passengers along the Strand found their path suddenly 
blocked by a projecting building beneath which the pave- 
ment passed, and as they glanced upward on entering the 
arcade below it was to see on the wall above pictures of 
monsters and wild beasts, and to read in large letters — 
" Exeter Change. Royal Menagerie. Edwd. Cross, dealer 
in foreign birds and beasts." This famous menagerie, with 
its little rooms painted with exotic scenes, and its dens and 
cages wherein were lions and tigers whose roar alarmed the 
horses in the Strand below, was much beloved of " country 
cousins," and was likewise beloved of the boy Browning. 
Some years later, when the grounds of the Walworth Manor 
House were transformed into the Surrey Gardens, Cross's 
popular menagerie was moved south of the Thames, and was 
thus within easy access of Southampton Street ; and the 
pride of the collection at the Surrey Gardens was the magni- 
ficent lion so graphically described by Browning in The 
Glove — a huge creature with black mane, stiffening tail, and 
glowing eyes. But what is really significant in the descrip- 
tion is the way in which Browning dramatically associates 
himself with the feelings of the Hon as it issues from its 
den : — 

•' The lion at last was delivered. 

Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead ! 

And you saw by the flash on his forehead, 

By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, 

He was leagues in the desert already, 

Driving the flocks up the mountain ; 

Or cat-like crouched hard by the fountain 

To waylay the date-gathering negress." 

Yet the indications of this dramatic tendency in Browning 
do not cease even here. Among the " wild fancies " poured 

• It is by no means uncommon among children. I have known a child, whose 
imagination had been stimulated by a picture and a long name, imagine himself 
for weeks to be a duck-billed platypus ! — W, H. G. 



HIS LOVE OF NATURE 39 

into the ear of Pauline is not only that of gazing "drowsily 
on the bees that flit and play," but the certainty that he — 

" Can live all the life of plants . . . 

.... or with flowers 
And trees can smile in light at the sinking sun 
Just as the storm comes, as a girl would look 
On a departing lover." 

It matters little whether this is a record of Browning's 
own early imaginative life ; it is sufficient that he should 
even have imagined such an experience. But it becomes 
additionally significant when one notices that the same 
tendency is described not only in connection with the poet 
of Pauline but with the poet whose history is traced in 
Sordello ; for the Mantuan poet " partook the poppy's red 
effrontery," and in imagination was " transferred to flower or 
tree." It was only after having passed through this stage 
that he finally came to live in an imaginative world of men — 

" as he used to blend 
With tree and flower — nay more entirely, else 
'Twere mockery." 

Browning's strong love for flowers came to him from his 
mother. " How I remember the flowers — even grasses — of 
places I have seen!" he wrote to Miss Haworth in 1838. 
" Some flower or weed, I should say, that gets somehow 
connected with them." A snowdrop transported him to 
Prussia, because he had seen those flowers at Tilsit on his 
way to Russia in the spring of 1834; flowering willows 
brought back visions of the flat meadows, the canals, and 
early morning mists of Holland ; almost the only souvenir 
he brought from Rome in 1844 was a few seeds from the 
Fountain of Egeria to plant in the garden at Hatcham ; the 
sole fact he cared to glean from one Latin book which he 
read for Paracelsus was that the Swiss physician loved 
pansies.^ In later life, when he was asked, " You have not a 
great love for Nature, have you ? " he replied, " Yes, I have, 
but I love men and women better." In earlier life no one 

• He mentioned khe flower in Paracelsus^ book iii., and added the note, 
" Citrinula (flammula) herba Paracelso mullum familiaris. — Dorn." 



40 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

would have dreamed of the necessity of asking such a 
question ; and Frances Power Cobbe, who saw much of the 
poet in Florence, has recorded that 

"when we drove out in parties he would discuss every tree and 
weed and get excited about the difference between eglantine and 
eglatere (if there be any), and between either of them and honey- 
suckle." 1 

The garden at Hatcham was his mother's delight, and in 
it mother and son had culled the flowers he continually 
carried to Miss Barrett during the days of his courtship : — 

" Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers 
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through 
And winter." 

When, therefore, in 1849, ^^^ news reached Florence of 
the death of his mother, it was of her garden that Browning 
instinctively thought. " He says it would break his heart to 
see his mother's roses over the wall, and the place where she 
used to lay her scissors and gloves."^ If Browning, like 
Sordello, ceased early in life to desire to "blend with tree 
and flower," after the fashion described in Pauline, he seems 
to have retained in another and characteristic manner some- 
what of the same longing, for, in the letter of 1838, from 
which quotation has already been made, he declared, " I 
have, you are to know, such a love for flowers and leaves — 
some leaves — that I every now and then, in an impatience at 
being able to possess myself of them thoroughly, to see them 
quite, satiate myself with their scent — bite them to bits." 
It is the poet of Pauline over again possessed by 

" a principle of restlessness 
Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all." 

* Life of Frances Power Cobbe, vol. ii. p. 15 (1894 ed.). 

* E. B. B. to Miss Mitford, April 30, 1849. Letters of Mrs. Browning, vol. i. 
P- 399. . 



CHAPTER III 
"PAULINE" 

Byronic influence — Incondita — W. J. Fox's approbation — Browning's 
friendship with Eliza and Sarah Flower — He leaves school at fourteen — 
Entered at London University — His brief attendance there — A period of 
revolt — Influence of Shelley — " Growing pains" — Chooses poetry as his 
vocation — Attends lectures at Guy's hospital — His studies and relaxations 
— His young ambitions — Pauline published — Fox's encouragement — 
John Stuart Mill's strictures — "Autumn in everything." 

EARLY in 1824, one name was on every lip: Europe 
had been thunderstruck by the news from Missolonghi. 
Tennyson, a boy of fifteen, rushed forth to carve on 
the rocks near Somersby the words " Byron is dead." Carlyle 
wrote to his wife, " Alas ! poor Byron ! The news of his death 
came upon my heart like a mass of lead . . . as if I had lost 
a brother." " I was told it," says another, " all alone in a room 
full of people. If they had said the sun or the moon was 
gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the 
idea of a more awful or dreary blank in the creation than 
the words 'Byron is dead.*" It is no wonder that when 
Browning, as a schoolboy of twelve, began in this same year, 
a little volume of verse, his muse bore strong evidence of the 
influence of Byron. 

Browning humbly called his little volume Incondita, 
possibly in allusion to the fact that " in the beginning " even 
the earth itself was " without form." These early efforts were 
inevitably imitative, though his parents thought so highly of 
them that they made serious but futile attempts to find a 
publisher. Upon his father's bookselves were the sixty-two 
volumes of the 1807 edition of Bagster's English poets, and 
in these the boy had read freely with the result recorded in 
Pauline : — 



42 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

" I had done nothing, so I sought to know 
What mind had yet achieved. No fear was mine 
As I gazed on the works of mighty bards, 
In the first joy at finding my own thoughts 
Recorded and my powers exemplified, 
And feeling their aspirings were my own." 

But, adds he, 

'* I rather sought 
To rival what I wondered at, than form 
Creations of my own." 

Even apart from Byron's death it is probable that his 
influence would have been marked ; but the tragedy of 1824 
would tend to accentuate this influence. Twenty years later 
Browning wrote to Miss Barrett, " I always retained my first 
feeling for Byron in many respects, I would at any time have 
gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one of his gloves, 
I am sure — while Heaven knows that I could not get up 
enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it 
all Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were condensed into 
the little china bottle yonder, after the Rosicrucian fashion." * 
And in 1878, thirty years after the date of this letter, in spite 
of his grief at the sudden death of his friend, Miss Egerton 
Smith, he could not leave Geneva and La Saisiaz without first 
visiting the Villa Diodati, where Byron had lived, to pluck a 
leaf as a memorial — " ivy, plucked for Byron's sake." 

Miss Eliza Flower, a lady of twenty-two, whose acquaint- 
ance the boy had recently made at Hackney, saw these 
unpublished poems and admired them so much that she 
made a copy, which she showed to the Rev. W. Johnson Fox, 
then fast becoming one of the notabilities of the day — "which 
verses," says Browning, " he praised not a little, which praise 
comforted me not a little." Browning himself confessed that 
in his youth he wrote only musically, and Fox afterwards 
remarked to the poet that his impression of Incondita was 
that it showed " too great splendour of language and too little 

• Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., vol. ii. p. 455, 22 August, 1846. The 
reference to Finchley is due to the fact that two days previously Miss Barrett had 
written that she had driven as far as that spot. 



W. J. FOX 43 

wealth of thought." ^ Browning wisely destroyed his manu- 
script, as he also in later years destroyed the copy made by 
Miss Flower, when it fell into his hands. The only things 
memorable in connection with the childish volume are the 
influence of Byron and the introduction to Mr. Fox, who 
became, as he said, his " literary father." 

Fox, " the Norwich Weaver Boy," as he signed himself 
during his vigorous labours against the Corn Laws, was 
twenty-six years older than Browning and but four years 
younger than the poet's father. From the loom at Norwich, 
where his mother had read to him as he worked, he had passed 
to the Homerton Congregational College, and in 1810 became 
pastor of a Congregational Chapel at Fareham, in Hampshire. 
Brought up on what he termed the " sour milk of Calvinism," 
he had even at that date moved rapidly towards Unitarianism, 
and by 18 12, the year of Browning's birth, the renunciation of 
his belief in the doctrines in which he had been trained was 
practically complete. When Browning, as a child of five, was 
writing Ossianic poems, Fox was called to London as minister 
of the chapel in Parliament Court, and speedily became the 
acknowledged leader of the Unitarians. Keenly interested in 
all public questions, he became known not only as an eloquent 
preacher, but as a social and educational reformer, a writer, 
and an able platform speaker, whose presence was eagerly 
sought by many who did not share his religious views. In 
1824, when Incondita was begun, his new chapel in South 
Place, Finsbury, was opened, and he himself was writing the 
first article for the Westminster Review, which he helped Mill's 
father to found. When Fox came to London, in 18 17, he 
had settled at Hackney, not far from his old college at 
Homerton, where his friend the Rev. Robert Aspland had 
among the members of his congregation the family of Mr. 
Earles, for whose children Browning's father wrote the version 
of the Pied Piper, from which quotation has been made. 
Thus Camberwell came in touch with Hackney, for Mr. 
Browning was a frequent visitor at the cottage of Mr. Earles. 

Fox, an advanced Liberal and Reformer, had long known 
and revered Benjamin Flower, thirty years his senior, who as 

^ This judgment, passed on the work of a child, may be thought to show some 
want of humour on the critic's part. 



44 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

editor for seven years of the Cambridge Intelligencer'^ had 
made that paper a power among advocates of political and 
religious liberty. Imprisoned for alleged libel, Flower was 
visited in prison by an admiring lady whom he afterwards 
married ; the paper was given up, and after settling as a printer 
at Harlow, in Essex, he retired to Dalston, close to Hackney, 
where he died. At his death, in 1829, some three years 
before the publication of Pauline, Eliza and Sarah, his two 
beautiful and intellectual daughters, who were intimately 
associated with the early life of Browning, were left under 
Fox's guardianship. Browning's intimacy with these ladies 
dates from the period of their visits to Hackney some three 
or four years before 1827, the date at which Flower finally 
removed from Harlow. As is evident from the following 
extract from a letter written by Sarah Flower to a cousin at 
Stratford-on-Avon in June, 1833, two months after the 
publication of Pauline, there had been a lull in the intimacy : — 

"Have you seen anything oi Pauline! I will send you down 
one of the first copies. We have renewed an old acquaintance with 
the author, who is the * poet boy ' we used to know years ago. He 
is yet unmatured, and will do much better things. He is very inter- 
esting from his great power of conversation and thorough originality, 
to say nothing of his personal appearance, which would be excep- 
tionally poetical if nature had not served him an unkind trick in 
giving him an ugly nose." ^ 

Eliza Flower was nine, and Sarah Flower seven, years 
Browning's senior, and of the elder sister Mrs. Orr has truly 
said that, "if in spite of his denials, any woman inspired 
Pauline, it can be no other than she." In his early teens he 
wrote her boyish letters and verses, all of which he destroyed 
when they fell into his hands, after Fox's death in 1864. His 
boyish love is said to have subsided into a " warm and very 
loyal friendship," yet his admiration and tenderness " had so 
deep a root that he never in latest life mentioned her name 

' To this Coleridge had sent his "Ode to the Departing Year," published 
31 December, 1796. When Coleridge closed his Watchman (June, 1796), he 
advised his readers to transfer their interest to the Cambridge Intelligencer. 

* Letter of June, 1833, to Mrs, E. F. Flower, Centenary of South Place, by 
Moncure D. Conway, 1894, p. 88. Dr. Conway wittily suggests that "the nose 
must have improved along with the poetry." 



ELIZA AND SARAH FLOWER 45 

with indifference." Her affection for him seems to have 
lasted to the end : she died, unmarried, at the age of forty- 
three, in 1846, the year of Browning's marriage, and not 
long before her death from consumption he wrote — " of your 
health I shall not trust myself to speak : you must know 
what is unspoken." 

Browning's intimacy with the two sisters was largely due 
to community of interests. Eliza was very musical : so was 
he. She composed, played, and sang: so did he. In 1846 
he wrote, " I never had another feeling than entire admiration 
for your music — entire admiration," and ihe added words 
which, considering his own acknowledged musical knowledge 
and attainments, are sufficiently striking : — " I put it apart 
from all other English music I know, and fully believe in it 
as the music we all waited for." Sarah Flower was passion- 
ately fond of the stage ; so, in early days, was Browning. 
She had even desired to take a place among actors : this too, 
for a time, was among Browning's dreams. He would walk 
all the way from Camberwell to Richmond to see Edmund 
Kean perform during his last days, and would return on foot 
through the country lanes in the early morning hours with 
his cousin, James Silverthorne. At the end of Pauline are 
the words " Richmond, 22 October, 1832," which have led the 
unwary to declare that Browning was then living at Rich- 
mond ; but he never even passed a night there. A note which 
he made in his own copy of the first edition of Pauline 
explains how he came to date his poem from that spot : — 

" Kean was acting there ; I saw him in Richard III that night 
and conceived the childish scheme already mentioned \i.e. of writing 
Pauline and other works]. There is an allusion to Kean, page 47. 
I don't know whether I had not made up my mind to act as well as 
to make verses, music, and God knows what, — que de chateaux en 
Espagtiel" 

Kean died in the following May, so "sunk by error" and 
intemperance that the vigour of his last representations of 
the youthful Richard was the more remarkable. The follow- 
ing lines from Pauline are those which refer to the great 
tragedian at the little theatre on Richmond Green, beside 
which he lived and died — a theatre which saw not only the 



46 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

last performances of Kean, but the first performance of 
Helen Faucit, who, not long afterwards, was to take the 
heroine's part in Browning's Strafford and in his Blot in tlie 
^Scutcheon : — 

" I will be gifted with a wondrous soul, 
Yet sunk by error to men's sympathy, 
And in the wane of life ; yet only so 
As to call up their fears ; and then shall come 
A time requiring youth's best energies j — 
And straight I fling age, sorrow, sickness off, 
And I rise triumphing over my decay." 

But there were still other bonds between Browning and 
the two sisters, both of whom had literary tastes. Eliza 
Flower's critical judgment was allowed to be excellent, and 
Sarah wrote poetry. Her long dramatic poem Vivia Per- 
petna (1841), named after the martyr, is doubtless not known 
to one in a hundred thousand of those who are familiar 
with her Nearer, my God, to Thee, a hymn first sung by the 
two sisters at Mr. Fox's chapel at South Place, where they 
led the singing. 

Robert Browning may reasonably be said to have con- 
tributed to the evolution of this famous hymn : he certainly 
had his share in creating those " stony griefs " out of which 
his friend, in the year in which his own Sordello appeared, 
raised her " Bethel," as is clear from the following extract 
from a pathetic letter written by Sarah Flower to Fox in 
November, 1827, when Browning was a lad between fifteen 
and sixteen : — 

" My mind has been wandering a long time, and now it seems to 
have lost sight of that only invulnerable hold against the assaults of 
this warring world, a firm belief in the genuineness of the Scriptures. 
. . . The cloud has come over me gradually, and I did not discover 
the darkness in which my soul was shrouded until, in seeking to give 
light to others, my own gloomy state became too settled to admit of 
doubt. It was in answering Robert Browning that my mind refused 
to bring forward argument, turned recreant, and sided with the 
enemy. . . . And now, as I sit and look up to the room in which I 
first had existence \i.e. at Harlow] and think of the mother who gave 
it, and watch the window of the chamber in which she yielded hers, 
in death as in life a fervent Christian, that thought Unks itself with 



RELEASED FROM SCHOOL 47 

another — how much rather would she I had never been, than to be 
what I now am." * 

This letter indicates something of that spirit of revolt and 
restlessness which had taken possession of Browning — an 
experience destined ere long to contribute to the dramatic 
intensity of portions of Paracelsus. This period of Sturm 
und Drang, to employ the somewhat hackneyed phrase, 
began not long after the " oddish sort of boy " — so he termed 
himself — finished his school life at the age of fourteen. 

Regret has been expressed that Browning did not proceed 
to a public school. But the experience at Mr. Ready's was 
hardly encouraging. Undoubtedly an Arnold or a Thring 
might have exerted a helpful influence upon Browning ; but 
in 1826, Arnold was still the unknown private tutor of Lale- 
ham ; and Thring was a child of five. Nor were public 
schools in good odour : " a complete reformation or a complete 
destruction of the whole system seemed to many persons 
sooner or later to be inevitable." ^ Browning, therefore, for 
two years after leaving Mr. Ready, studied under a French 
tutor, Loradoux by name, who spent the mornings at 
Southampton Street, the boy's soul being left free to " seek 
its old delights" for the rest of the day among the book- 
shelves and in music. He read widely in history and in 
literature, and soon came in touch with the poet Donne, 
whose Go and Catch a Falling Star he set to music and was 
fond of singing. It was not, however, till later that the 
poetry of Donne became a potent literary influence upon 
him. He continued of course to write verse — even French 
verse, in which he made false quantities in Greek names so 
as to avoid offending the not too scholarly susceptibilities of 
his French Professeur des Langues? These two years were 
really a period of waiting and preparation for what proved in 
his case to be an unsuccessful experiment. Carlyle described 
Browning's parents as " people of respectable position among 
the dissenters, but not rich neither " ; the proposals set forth 

' Centenary of South Place, 1894, p. 46. 

• Stanley's Life of Arnold, chap. iii. 

» Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 420. "My father," says Mr. R. 
Barrett Browning, " could then write French verse as easily as English. He and 
his sister were much interested in French literature, and took in the Siicle." 



48 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

therefore in March, 1825 — a year before Browning left 
school — for the foundation of a University in London would 
very naturally arouse their interest and attention. Oxford 
and Cambridge were then closed to the conscientious dis- 
senter ; indeed, until 1854 no dissenter could take a degree at 
Cambridge, and no dissenter could even become a student at 
Oxford. But in 1825 it was proposed to found a new 
University in London, the objects being threefold : — it was to 
be wholly unsectarian, the education was to be far less costly 
than at the older universities, and home life and home 
influence could coexist with the higher education given. 
All three objects appealed to the household at Camberwell, 
so that Mr. Browning was among the early shareholders or 
" proprietors " who subscribed ;^ioo toward the new venture. 
Land was secured in Gower Street ; in 1827, the popular 
Duke of Sussex laid the foundation stone ; and by the 
summer of 1828 London University — now University College 
— though as yet wing-less, dome-less, and with unfinished 
portico, was so far complete as to be called by the Times " a 
chaste and truly classic specimen of Grecian architecture." 
In October the lectures and classes began, but, three months 
before that date and within less than three weeks after the 
first entry. Browning's name was placed on the Register 
thus: "No. 16, June 30, 1828. Robert Browning : age 16: 
Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell, nomi- 
nated by Robert Browning, senior." The classes arranged 
for were Greek, German and Latin, and as the work began 
early — the German class was held at eight in the morning — 
lodgings were taken for Browning with a Mr. Hughes in 
Bedford Square. After one week, however, Browning, who 
had gone home for the Sunday, decided not to return to 
Bedford Square, so that the German class, appp-'^-'^'y, knew 
him no more. With similar abruptness, during the second 
term ** the bright handsome youth with long black hair 
falling over his shoulders " quitted the university altogether. 
Perhaps, like the poet in Pauline^ he 

" was lonely, far from woods and fields 
And amid dullest sights, who should be loose 
As a stag." 



LONDON UNIVERSITY 49 

So that to his home-sickness, his dislike of the bricks and 
mortar of Bloomsbury, and his sense of restraint is to be 
attributed his father's loss of nearly ;^ioo.^ Surely Browning 
only stated the truth when he wrote of his parents some 
twenty years later, " I have been ' spoiled ' in this world " ; ^ 
" Since I was a child I never looked for the least or greatest 
thing within the compass of their means to give, but given it 
was — nor for liberty but it was conceded ; " ^ "I know as 
certainly as I know anything that if I could bring myself to 
ask them to give up everything in the world they would do 
it and cheerfully ; " * and Carlyle, after a visit to Browning at 
Hatcham, remarked that "the little room in which he kept 
his books was in that sort of trim that showed he was the 
very apple of their eyes." It is not surprising that Browning 
became self-centred and for a time selfish, and that his first 
three poems contain studies of self-centred natures. Born 
" supremely passionate," it was natural that " during this 
time of growth he should have been not only more restless 
but less amiable than at any other. The always impatient 
temper assumed a quality of aggressiveness. He behaved as 
a youth will who knows himself to be clever, and believes 
he is not appreciated. . . . He set the judgments of those 
about him at defiance, and gratuitously proclaimed himself 
everything that he was and some things that he was not." ^ 
The influence of Shelley accentuated although it did not 
create this mood. 

Browning's mother, " a divine woman " he called her, 
was deeply religious. Six years before his birth she had 
joined the Congregational Church which met at York Street, 
Walworth, and until her death, forty-three years later, she 
might have been seen Sunday after Sunday walking thither 

' Subscribers were to receive four per cent, interest ; this could not be paid. 
Moreover, free education was granted to their nominee, and Browning's fees for 
the first session amounted to j^22. Latin, £'j los. ; Greek, £y loj. ; [Italian 
scratched out and replaced by] German, £6 ; Library, ^i. At this rate, there- 
fore, Mr. Browning may be said to have prepaid five sessions, of which his son 
completed about half the first. 

« Le/iers of R. B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 34. 1845. 

=■ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 228. 1846. 

* Ibid. vol. ii. p. 230. 1846. 

* Orr, Life of Browning, pp. 45, 46. 

E 



so THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

even from Hatcham, after the family had left Camberwell. 
Not even the acutest neuralgia could keep her from her place. 
Her children were both christened at York Street ; and in 
1820, under her influence, her husband, who had been brought 
up as an Episcopalian and is said to have been more than 
liberal in doctrinal matters, also joined the Congregational 
body. Browning, of whom Hiram Powers, the American 
sculptor in Florence, said that he had " the biggest bump of 
reverence " he ever saw, adored his mother, and was, in early 
days, to use his own words, " passionately religious " ; ^ but 
neither the bump of reverence nor his mother's influence 
served to restrain him during this period of revolt. Seated 
with his parents in the front of the gallery on the right of the 
pulpit, he " did not care to conceal his something more than 
indifference to the ministrations to which he listened weekly, 
and which once brought down upon him a rebuke from the 
Pastor in open church." The Rev. George Clayton, however, 
was one of the old school, who is said to have " stiffened and 
starched " those who sat under him,'^ as his more outspoken 
and fiery neighbour the Rev. Joseph Irons, of Camberwell 
Grove, is said to have " ironed " them ; ^ even the Rev. Edward 
White, brother of the writer of this account of Browning, felt 
impelled as a boy to gnaw the pew-top during Mr. Clayton's 
lengthy prayers — " prayers which were newspapers, entering 
into every particular of births, marriages, and deaths, and 
foreign travel of deacons and the like." The sermons of 
good Mr. Clayton, moreover, did not reveal either the intel- 
lect of a Pascal or the eloquence of a Jeremy Taylor. But, 
in addition to this, Browning, while reading with his French 
tutor, had come in touch not only with Marot, who was to 
supply a motto for Pauline and to re-appear later on in The 

' Orr, Life of Broxoning, p. 26. 

' Mr. Clayton — the Rev, Georgius Clayton he was often called — is described 
in the British Weekly of 20 December, 1889, from which these references to him 
are taken, as one who " combined the character of a saint, a dancing master, and 
an orthodox eighteenth-century theologian in about equal proportions." 

' Domett (in his Diary-) recalls going up Camberwell Grove one Sunday 
evening with a friend, to try how far oft' they could hear Mr. Irons " bawling out 
his sermon " ; and how they stood outside at a little distance and clearly over- 
heard : " I am very sorry to say it, beloved brethren, but it is an undoubted fact 
that Roman Catholic and midnight assassin are synonymous terms." 



INFLUENCE OF SHELLEY 51 

Glova, but with Voltaire, all of whose works were on the 
bookshelves. These works the boy set himself to read, and it 
was as a juvenile student of the Philosopher of Ferney that 
he posed Miss Sarah Flower, as narrated in her letter of 
November, 1827. When, therefore, he saw on a second-hand 
bookstall a copy of a pirated edition of Queen Mab, labelled 
" Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem ; very scarce," he was 
attracted at once ; and, on perusal, the work proved no less 
attractive because it was written, as Shelley himself declared, 
"in the most furious style, with long notes against Jesus 
Christ, and God the Father, and the King, and the bishops, 
and marriage, and the devil knows what." Browning was 
shocked by some of the notes, but by the poem itself, crude 
as it was — " villainous trash " Shelley indeed lived to term it 
— he found himself very deeply moved. Here was some- 
thing different from Voltaire, unlike Bagster's sixty-two 
volumes of poets, unlike the passion of Byron. Browning's 
aspiring soul found even in the Queen Mab of the then un- 
known Shelley 

" A key to a new world, the muttering 
Of angels, some thing yet unguessed by man. 
How my heart leapt as still I sought and found 
Much there, I felt my own soul had conceived, 
But there living and burning ! " 

This advent of Shelley has been assigned hitherto to 
Browning's thirteenth or fourteenth year. But this is a 
mistake. It belongs to the end of his sixteenth year, and he 
himself has accurately described the event in Pauline. 

" I was no more a boy, the past was breaking 
Before the future and like fever worked. 
I thought on my new self, and all my powers 
Burst out. I dreamed not of restraint, but gazed 
On all things : schemes and systems went and came, 
. . . And my choice fell 
Not so much on a system as a man." 

Under the influence of Queen Mab Browning pronounced 
himself an atheist, and Shelley's long note of twenty pages 
setting forth the physical and moral advantages of vege- 
tarianism made at least one convert ; for during more than 



52 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

two years Browning lived on bread and potatoes ! Weakened 
eyesight is said to have caused a return to his former diet, 
and by the time he wrote Pauline he could look back upon 
his atheism as a thing of the past. 

" But I have always had one lode-star ; now, 
As I look back, I see that I have halted 
Or hastened as I looked towards that star — 
A need, a trust, a yearning after God : 
A feeling I have analysed but late. 
But it existed, and was reconciled 
With a neglect of all I deemed his laws. 
Which yet, when seen in others, I abhorred, 

And I can only lay it to the fruit 

Of a sad after-time that I could doubt 

Even his being." 

Years afterwards Browning wrote of Shelley that men 
would not 

"persist in confounding, any more than God confounds, with 
genuine infidelity and an atheism of the heart those passionate 
impatient struggles of a boy towards truth and love. . . . Crude 
convictions of boyhood, conveyed in imperfect and unapt forms of 
speech, — for such things all boys have been pardoned. They are 
growing pains, accompanied by temporary distortion of soul also." * 

It is impossible not to see in this a memory of his own experi- 
ence ; he never forgot the sorrow his own " growing pains " 
had caused his mother, nor her patience and love — "it dis- 
tressed his mother, the one being in the world he truly loved, 
and deserves remembering in the tender sorrow with which 
he himself remembered it." ^ 

But Shelley's influence was not confined to Queen Mab 
and atheism and vegetarianism. Inspired by what he had 
read, Browning eagerly set himself the " sweet task to gather 
every breathing " of the almost unknown poet. From the 
editor of the Literary Gazette — the AtJiencemn was but a few 
months old — he finally learnt what the booksellers could not 

* Browning's preface to the Letters of Shelley {sSiGX-^zxAs found to be spurious), 
1852. 

* Mrs. Orr, p. 46. 



"VOWED TO LIBERTY" 53 

tell him, that Shelley's poems could be obtained from Charles 
Oilier of Vere Street, and, as May was drawing near, he 
asked for them as a birthday present. By the irony of fate 
it was his devout mother who was the purchaser. On 7 May, 
1828, he was sixteen, and while the nightingales were singing 
in the gardens behind Southampton Street he sat turning the 
leaves of Rosalind and Helen — afterwards lent to Fox and lost 
in the Barnet woods by Eliza Flower; of the Cenci ; of the 
Pisa edition of Adonais — borrowed and sold by Thomas 
Powell ; ^ of the Epipsychidion, of the Prometheus Unbound 
and the Hellas. Cowley has told how, as a boy, he read the 
Faerie Queene and was thus made a poet on the spot ; 
Wordsworth has described his own dedication as a poet 
during the memorable walk along the hills of Cumberland, 
when mountains, sea, and misty valleys were glorified by the 
rising sun ; and Browning as he read the Prometheus and the 
Hellas realized that he had become subject to a spell such as 
had never yet been laid upon him. 

" I was vowed to liberty, 
Men were to be as gods and earth a heaven, 
And I — ah, what a life was mine to be ! 
My whole soul rose to meet it." 

The formal classes in Gower Street, which began five 
months later, not unnaturally proved repugnant to this 
enthusiastic mood. 

Shelley did not come unattended. The Adonais spoke of 
another poet who had become 

" a portion of the loveliness 
Which once he made more lovely j " 

and Shelley proved an introduction to Keats, whose works 
were soon procured. Nor were minor singers neglected, for, 
in a letter of 1841, Browning narrates how he had run — "real 
running, for I was a boy, to Bond Street from Camberwell, 
and came back with a small book brimful of the sweetest, 
truest things in the world " — the now forgotten Lyric Offerings 
of Laraan Blanchard, which appeared in the summer of 1828. 

* An admitted scamp, by whom Browning and some of his early friends were 
taken in. 



54 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The spring of 1829, when Browning abruptly left College, 
about a year after these experiences, marks his definite 
choice of poetry as his vocation. "He appealed to his 
father, whether it would not be better for him to see life in 
its best sense, and cultivate the powers of his mind, than to 
shackle himself in the very outset of his career by a laborious 
training foreign to that aim." These words are simply the 
prose equivalent of what is stated in Pauline immediately 
after the reference to his college days : — 

" 'Twas in my plan to look on real life, 
The life all new to me : my theories 
Were firm, so them I left to look and learn 
Mankind, its cares, hopes, fears, its woes and joys." 

One experience in this "plan to look on real life" is 
interesting. Keats as a medical student walked the hospitals ; 
Coleridge, fascinated by his brother's studies, " became wild 
to be apprenticed to a surgeon " ; and Browning, eager to 
" see, know, taste, feel, all," attended the well-known Dr. 
Blundell's lectures at Guy's Hospital. It was "dear old 
Pritchard," a brisk, dapper, little, grey-haired sea-captain, 
with a squint and a delightful fund of tales of adventure, 
who brought this about, for he was Dr. Blundell's cousin. 
Captain Pritchard, a memorable figure in the poet's early 
life, lived at Battersea, where Browning's father was born : 
he is mentioned in the earliest existing letter written by 
Browning, and when he died he left the poet's sister ;^iooo. 
Dr. Blundell's lectures are said to have aroused in Browning 
"considerable interest in the sciences connected with 
medicine," and as Coleridge, in describing his own period 
of medical enthusiasm, says, " English, Latin, yea, Greek 
books of medicine read I incessantly, Blanchard's Latin 
Medical Dictionary I had nearly by heart," ^ so may it have 
been with Browning ; a possibility, or probability, not 
without interest for the evolution of Paracelsus. 

Browning's chief companions during these early days 

were his cousins, James, John, and George Silverthorne, who 

lived in Portland Place, Peckham Road, adjoining their 

father's brewery and within a few minutes' walk of Hanover 

* J. Gillman, Life of S. T. Coleridge, 1838, pp. 22, 23. 



EARLY COMRADES 55 

Cottage. All three brothers were musical, and have been 
described as " wild youths." Browning's chosen friend was 
James, the eldest, who ultimately succeeded for a short time 
to the brewery. On his death, in May, 1852, Browning wrote 
the tender lines May and Death, in which he refers to the 
" warm moon-births and long 'evening ends " when they had 
walked home together arm-in-arm from theatre or opera — 
simple pleasures like those described in Lamb's essay on Old 
China — or had rambled in a "certain wood," the favourite 
Dulwich Wood, where grew the spotted Persicaria which he 
so touchingly introduces into this poem. James Silverthorne 
was the only friend present at Browning's marriage in 1846, 
and his name stands in the register of Marylebone Church as 
one of the two witnesses. 

That Browning continued his music, that he studied, that 
he wrote — and destroyed what he had written — that he 
danced, rode, fenced and boxed, during this period of 
preparation, is well known.^ Mrs. Orr, however, seemed 
more than doubtful as to whether he sought experience of 
" real life " among the gipsies and at fairs. He was certainly 
not without experience of both ; for from the days when 
Pepys recorded that he and his wife " and Mercer and Deb 
went to see the gipsies at Lambeth " until the days of Byron 
and of Browning, these wanderers were familiar to those who 
dwelt south of the Thames. The very name of Gipsy Hill 
commemorates Margaret Finch, the famous Gipsy Queen 
of Norwood, who, like the old crone in The Flight of the 
Duchess, was "the oldest Gypsy then above ground," for 
when she died in 1740 she was a hundred and nine. When, 
not long before Browning's birth, the gipsies quitted Nor- 
wood, it was to establish themselves in Dulwich Wood : here 
Byron, when a schoolboy at Dr. Glennie's in Lordship Lane, 

* Some lines in A Likeness (1864) recall — 

"the spoils 
Of youth, — masks, gloves, and foils. 
And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine, 

And the long whip, the tandem -lasher, 

And the cast from a fist ( ' not, alas ! mine, 

* But my master's, the Tipton slasher '), 

And the cards where pistol-balls mark ace, 

And a satin shoe used for cigar-case," , . 

with other miscellaneous treasures. 



$6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

used to visit them, and here Browning, who walked the wood 
by day and after nightfall, must frequently have met them. 
At the age of fifty years he learnt to swim at Pornic, but he 
had no need to wait for his visit to that little Breton seaside 
village to behold a handsome gipsy Fifine at the Fair. For 
three days each summer the Walworth Road from Camber- 
well Gate to the village green — a goodly mile — was aglow 
after sunset with candles beneath coloured shades on the 
road-side stalls : on the Green itself, besides the inevitable 
boats and swings and merry-go-rounds, there was the 
canvas-covered avenue with its gingerbread booths, there 
was music and dancing, and best of all, there was the ever- 
popular Richardson's Theatre — appreciated, it is said, by the 
poet in his younger days. Peckham also had its fair, which 
was held just opposite Mr. Ready's school ; and Greenwich, 
noisiest and most boisterous of fairs, was close at hand. 

In writing to Miss Barrett early in 1846, Browning 
remarked : 

"my sympathies are very wide and general, — always have been 
— and the natural problem has been the giving unity to their object, 
concentrating them instead of dispersing." 

This remained true throughout his life. In Rome, in i860 
and 1 86 1, for instance, this tendency temporarily revealed 
itself in an absorbing passion for modelling in the studio of 
his friend William Story ; and nearly thirty years previously 
it had led him with youthful self-confidence to outline a 
vast scheme by which he hoped to give expression to the 
many-sidedness of his nature. Pauline, which appeared in 
March, 1833, was to be the first portion of this huge scheme, 
the details of which he duly set forth in a note inserted at 
the beginning of his own copy : — 

*' The following Poem was written in pursuance of a foolish plan 
which occupied me mightily for a time, and which had for its object 
the enabling me to assume and realize I know not how many 
different characters : — meanwhile the world was never to guess that 
* Brown, Smith, Jones and Robinson ' (as the spelling books have it) 
the respective authors of this poem, the other novel, such an opera, 
such a speech, etc., etc., were no other than one and the same indi- 
vidual. The present abortion was the first work of the Poet of the 



"PAULINE" PUBLISHED 57 

batch, who would have been more legitimately myself than most of the 
others : but I surrounded him with all manner of (to my then notion) 
poetical accessories, and had planned quite a delightful life for him. 
Only this crab remains of the shapely Tree of Life in this Fool's 
paradise of mine. — R.B." 

This plan was conceived on the October evening of 1832, 
on which he had seen Kean at Richmond in Richard III ; 
and as the preface to Pauline indicates, that poem was com- 
pleted by January, 1833. Like all Browning's early poetry, 
except Stra^ord, it was published at the expense of the 
family. His aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne, with whom he was a 
great favourite, paid the twenty-six pounds five shillings ^ 
to Saunders and Otley for Pauline : his father bore the ex- 
pense of Paracelsus, Sordello, and the eight parts of Bells 
and Pomegranates. In March, when Pauline was ready, 
Browning bethought himself of the Rev. VV. J. Fox, whom he 
had not seen since the days of Incondita. Fox had recently 
added to his many labours the duties of editor of the Monthly 
Repository, which he had purchased and transformed : it had 
been the chief Unitarian theological organ ; he made it a 
social and literary review. In January of this year he had 
devoted ten pages to the recently published Poems of 
Tennyson : in April he devoted the same space to the 
anonymous volume of Browning.^ He had felt confident of 
Tennyson, he felt " no less certain of the author of Pauline" 
whom he emphatically pronounced a poet and a genius. 
Pauline was evidently a " hasty and imperfect sketch," said 
Fox, but 

"in recognizing a poet we cannot stand upon trifles, nor fret 
ourselves about such matters. Time enough for that afterwards, 
when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath had 
many particulars to settle about specific gravities and Hiero's crown \ 
but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted Eureka I " 

Seldom has a young poet received such a welcome. 
Browning was filled with " inexpressible delight " ; ^ and 

' She gave him ^^30, the rest of which was spent in advertising. Browning told 
Mr. Wise. 

- Monthly Repository, New Series, vol. vii. Tennyson, pp. 30-41 ; Pauline, 
pp. 252-262. 

' Orr, p. 102 ; letter of 1839 to Miss Haworth. 



58 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

this, "the most timely piece of kindness in the way of 
literary help that ever befell me," ^ as he termed it half a 
century later, laid the foundations of a friendship v/hich 
lasted for thirty years, till Fox's death in 1864. He lost no 
time in thanking his " Master," as Fox now became. 

" I can only say," he wrote, " that I am very proud to feel as 
grateful as I do. ... I shall never write a line without thinking of 
the source of my first praise." ^ 

Nor did this welcome stand alone, for, a week later, Allan 
Cunningham wrote in the Athenceum, 

"We open the book at random; but fine things abound; there 
is no difficulty in finding passages to vindicate our praise. . . . To 
one who sings so naturally, poetry must be as easy as music is to 
a bird." 

Why did Browning speak of a poem thus praised as an 
" abortion " ? Why did he refuse to reprint it for nearly five 
and thirty years ? — " I acknowledge and retain " it, he ulti- 
mately said in 1867, "with extreme repugnance and indeed 
purely of necessity." Not solely, it may be surmised, because 
he felt that " good draughtmanship " and " right handling 
were far beyond the artist" in 1833, but also because he had 
come to realize — and to realize very speedily — that, dramatic 
as he had intended his poem to be, there was only too much 
of self-revelation in its pages. John Stuart Mill seems to 
have been the unconscious instrument of this reaction. Six 
years the senior of Browning, whose very name was unknown 
to him, Mill, then unknown to fame, was Fox's friend and 
helper. The January number of the Monthly Repository^ 
which contained the editor's article on Tennyson also con- 
tained a paper by Mill on " What is poetry ? " Fox, there- 
fore, naturally sent Mill one of the twelve copies of Pauline 
which had been forwarded from Camberwell, as Mill was also 
a contributor to the Examiner and to Taifs Edinburgh 
Magazine. The Examiner refused to insert Mill's notice. 
During the summer of 1833, the editor of Taifs found 
himself so overwhelmed with verse that in July he even had 

' Unpublished letter to J, Dykes Campbell, January 26, 1887 (Wise). 

' Orr, p. 57. Mrs. Orr printed four letters to Fox about Pauline, pp. 5S"57' 



J. S. MILL'S VERDICT 59 

to apologize for being in arrears ; it happened therefore that 
in August Pauline, an anonymous poem, was dismissed at 
the end of two pages in which a dozen volumes had been 
criticized with the words — " a piece of pure bewilderment." 
Meanwhile Mill had read the poem four times, and whether 
Browning really suffered or gained by the overcrowded con- 
dition of the magazine may be judged from the note which 
he made at the end of the volume sent to him by Fox : — 

" With considerable poetic powers, the writer seems to me 
possessed with a more intense and morbid self-consciousness than 
I ever knew in any sane human being. I should think it a sincere 
confession, though of a most unlovable state, if the ' Pauline ' were 
not evidently a mere phantom. All about her is full of inconsistency 
— he neither loves her nor fancies he loves her, yet insists upon 
talking love to her. If she existed and loved him, he treats her most 
ungenerously and unfeelingly. All his aspirings and yearnings and 
regrets point to other things, never to her; then he pays Iter off 
toward the end by a piece of flummery, amounting to the modest 
request that she will love him and live with him and give herself up 
to him withotit his loving her — moyen?iant quoi he will think her and 
call her everything that is handsome, and he promises her that she 
shall find it mighty pleasant. Then he leaves off by saying he 
knows he shall have changed his mind by to-morrow, and despite 
* these intents which seem so fair,' but that having been thus visited 
once no doubt he will be again — and is therefore ' in perfect joy,' 
bad luck to him ! as the Irish say. A cento of most beautiful 
passages might be made from this poem, and the psychological 
history of himself is powerful and truthful — truth-like certainly, all but 
the last stage. That^ he evidently has not yet got into. The self- 
seeking and self-worshipping state is well described — beyond that, I 
should think the writer had made, as yet, only the next step, viz. into 
despising his own state. I even question whether part even of that 
self-disdain is not assumed. He is evidently dissatisfied, and feels 
part of the badness of his state ; he does not write as if it were 
purged out of him. If he once could muster a hearty hatred of his 
selfishness it would go ; as it is, he feels only the lack of good, not 
the positive evil. He feels not remorse, but only disappointment ; 
a mind in that state can only be regenerated by some new passion, 
and I know not what to wish for him but that he may meet with a 
real Pauline. 

" Meanwhile he should not attempt to show how a person may be 



6o THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

recovered from this morbid state, — for he is hardly convalescent, and 
' what should we speak of but that which we know ? ' " 

Browning, we are told, " was always ready to say he had 
been worth little in his young days. * I am better now/ he 
has said more than once, when its reminiscences have been 
invoked." ^ How far then was " John Mill, the metaphysical 
head," correct in his diagnosis of the spiritual condition of 
the author of Pauline, and when did Browning become 
convalescent .? Did Mill's closing words strike home, and is 
their influence to be traced in the soul-histories of Paracelsus 
and Sordello } It would seem possible. 

In October, 1832, Browning had walked the ten miles 
from Richmond to Camberwell confident in heart and with 
his mind aglow with his vast plans : a year later he was 
reading Mill's words and was writing on the fly-leaf of the 
little volume which had been returned to him by Fox : — 
"Robert Browning, October 30, 1833." Mill's note was at 
the end : did Browning write his own note at the beginning 
of the volume by way of supplement .'* Not a single copy of 
his poem had been sold ; and a bale of unbound sheets was 
destined to be sent home from the publishers. The " inex- 
pressible delight " of spring had vanished : autumn had 
come — "autumn in everything," as Andrea del Sarto sadly 
exclaims, — when Browning wrote on a blank page of his first 
published work, " Only this crab remains of the shapely Tree 
of Life in this Fool's paradise of mine," ^ 

' Mrs. Orr's Life, p. 46. 

* This fateful copy of Pauline is now in the Dyce and Forster Library at South 
Kensington. 



CHAPTER IV 
"PARACELSUS" 

Journey to St. Petersburg — Acquaintance with de Ripert-Monclar — 
Sources of Paracelsus — Shelley's influence discernible — Browning's own 
experiences reflected — Antecedent sXxidi)-— Paracelsus^ coldly received in 
general, is praised by John Forster — Wins its way among literary men — 
Browning's first meeting with Macready — He meets Forster at Macready's 
house — The Ion supper — " The author of Paracelsus " and " the poets of 
England." 

BROWNING'S " plan to look on real life " would seem 
to have had a somewhat unexpected fulfilment in 
the spring of 1834, for on Saturday, i March, when 
Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the Russian consul general, 
set forth on a special mission to Russia, he was accompanied 
by the youthful poet whose Pauline had appeared a year 
before. The origin of the acquaintance has not been traced. 

The first sight of foreign countries is a unique experience 
to the least imaginative ; to Browning's ardent and enthusiastic 
temperament the idea and its fulfilment must have afforded 
the keenest satisfaction. 

The General Steam Navigation Company already had 
poor little packets — which, according to that indefatigable 
maker of books, Mrs. Trollope, formed a painful contrast with 
those she had seen in America — running from London to 
Ostend and Rotterdam : but beyond this steam was not 
available, for even Belgium had, as yet, no railways. For 
fifteen hundred miles, therefore, the travellers journeyed day 
and night as fast as horses could take them. Four years 
later Browning told in stirring lines how three steeds and 
their riders had dashed into the darkness to gallop through 
the night, and how Roland, the "horse without peer," had 
alone survived to stagger into distant Aix bearing " the good 
news from Ghent." It was from his two journeys through 



62 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the Low Countries, in 1834, that he acquired the knowledge 
of localities shown in his spirited poem; and, in 1838, three 
months after his first voyage to Italy — during which he had 
written it — he once more passed from Aix to the sea-coast on 
his homeward journey by way of the Rhine. After leaving 
Rotterdam, on his outward journey, 1834, he passed by the 
home of the heroine of his Colombc's Birthday : — 

" Castle Ravestein — 
That sleeps out trustfully its extreme age 
On the Meuse' quiet bank, where she lived queen 
Over the water-buds," 

and then through "ancient famous happy Cleves," whence 
came Colombe's lover, the advocate Valence ; while the 
" thriving little burgh " of Juliers, now Germanized as Julich, 
which he makes the scene of his drama, lies not far to the east 
of Aix. At Aix, in the Council-hall of the Rath-haus, he saw 
the famous and oldest portrait of Charlemagne, a description 
of which he introduced into the fifth book of his Sordello. Of 
his journeys through the sandy flats of Prussia his poems 
bear no impress, but at Tilsit, on the eastern border, where, 
twenty-seven years before. Napoleon and the Tsar had met 
on a raft in mid-stream, he saw the snowdrops in blossom. 
Then began his experiences of the still ice-bound Russia : — 
the Cossacks at the doiiafie, the huge inns with their double- 
windowed, stove-heated dining-rooms festooned with ivy and 
other climbing plants, which grew as if in a hot-house, the 
peasants in their sheepskin coats, the scattered and scanty 
villages with gabled wooden houses, the interminable pine 
forests of Courland, Riga with its walls, narrow streets and 
interesting fair beside the frozen Dwina, the hills and valleys 
of Livonia, and the lonely level shores of Lake Peipus, the 
sandy soil and pine woods of Esthonia, and then St. Peters- 
burg. 

About 1843, Browning wrote an unpublished play. Only 
a Player-girl, and laid the scene in the Russian capital — " it 
was Russian," he told Miss Barrett, " and about a fair on the 
Neva, and booths and droshkies and fish-pies and so forth, 
with Palaces in the background." It was also the fruit of 
observation, for, when he reached the city, the Neva was still 



AT ST. PETERSBURG 63 

frozen. Before he left, however, he could see crowds of bushy- 
bearded, long-booted workmen in their sheepskin tunics and 
gaily coloured shirts, kept back by the pole-axes of the 
coarsely clad police, as they gathered to watch the huge ice- 
field gradually sink in mid-stream, split and crack in all 
directions, and then whirl in broken fragments, grating and 
grinding as they were swept along. A few days later he 
heard the booming of the guns, as the governor crossed the 
open stream to bear to the Tsar a goblet of the sparkling 
Neva water : then followed the rush of boats and boatmen : 
St. Petersburg, no longer three isolated portions, was once 
more united, as the floating wooden bridges swung into place 
across the mighty stream, and the city was en fete. 

It was in Russia that Browning met a king's messenger 
called Waring, a name to be employed eight years later for a 
fancy portrait of his loved friend, Alfred Domett, whom, 
among other imaginary experiences, he supposes to visit that 
wintry land : — 

" Waring in Moscow, to those rough 
Cold northern natures borne, perhaps." 

Among the pictures at the Hermitage he saw " florid old 
rogue Albano's masterpiece," to which he makes Guido 
refer in The Ring and the Book, as " bouncing Europa on the 
back o' the bull," ^ a subject to become more familiar to him 
in middle life from the replica in the Uffizi at Florence. 
The huge pine forests, however, through which he had driven 
day after day, " wall and wall of pine," impressed him more 
than anything he saw.^ In 1837, when he acted as godfather 
to the child of a friend, and was desirous of appropriately 
commemorating the occasion, his mind recurred to the 
"parent firs" he had seen three years before "in far 
Esthonian solitudes " and to the little seedlings which grew 
up beneath their sheltering shade ; and his musings resulted 

* Guido f lines 270-275. 

* A traveller who followed Browning in 1835 describes the monotonous 
beauty of these forests in the spring sunlight — the pines and birches with an 
undergrowth of juniper and a rich green carpet of blae-berries. " The fable of the 
magician's garden seemed realized, every leaf was hung with sapphires, rubies, 
and emeralds." 



64 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

in A Forest Thotight} Forty years later, in 1878, while 
staying on the Spliigen pass, the snow and the pine-trees of 
Switzerland conjured up memories of the snow and the pine 
woods of Russia, and he wrote Ivan Ivdnovitch, a poem in 
which there figures so tragically the useful two-headed axe 
he had seen at the girdle of every Russian workman — " 'Tis 
a hammer and saw and plane and chisel and — what know I 
else?" One other thing interested the music-loving poet — ■ 
the melancholy strains chanted by the Russian peasants. 
Half a century afterwards he met in Venice the Russian 
Prince Gagarin. For an hour they talked of Russian folk- 
songs and music, while Browning sang in a low voice the 
national airs he had picked up by ear during his brief visit of 
1834, till the Prince exclaimed in wonder that Browning's 
musical memory was " better than my own, on which I have 
hitherto piqued myself not a little." ^ 

After an absence of about three months Browning was 
again in London ; and the middle of 1834 is marked by an 
intimacy with a talented young Frenchman, Comte Am^dee 
de Ripert-Monclar, who for several years spent the summer 
in England. Whatever may be the case with Chevalier de 
Benkhausen, there is, fortunately, no doubt as to the origin 
of this friendship. Devoted as he was to the cause of the 
dethroned Bourbons, Monclar in his annual visits acted as a 
means of communication between the Royalists in France 
and the refugees of the revolution of 1830 ; but his friendship 
with the Brownings was quite unconnected with political 
considerations. Monclar's uncle, the Marquis of Fortia, 
member of many academies, widely known for his generous 
interest in literature, and himself a busy writer, was acquainted 
with William Shergold Browning, to whose literary work 
reference has already been made. Also, Monclar belonged 
to a branch of the family which had been ennobled by Louis 
XV. on account of the skill of Jean Pierre Francois, first 
Marquis of Monclar,^ in matters of finance : and Count 

* See Country Lifiy 10 June, 1905. "An unpublished poem by Robert 
Browning"; fifty- two lines, written November, 1837, 

* Century Magazine, vol. Ixiii. pp. 578-g, an article by Mrs. Bronson, 
" Browning in Venice," also printed in Cornhill, 1902. 

' Created Marquis 1769. He wrote wisely and well on fiscal matters, so that 



THE SOURCES OF "PARACELSUS" 65 

Am6d^e, afterwards Marquis, also developed an interest in 
financial affairs, so that there was special appropriateness in 
the fact that he was introduced to the cheery Reuben 
Browning, and thus to the household at Camberwell, by the 
brother who was engaged in the Paris banking house of the 
Rothschilds. As Browning was a good French scholar, and as, 
among other gifts, the Count was something of an artist and 
a student of history, it is evident that there was much that 
would be congenial to him at Southampton Street. It was 
he who drew the first existing portrait of Browning, and it 
was to him that Browning dedicated, in 1835, his first acknow- 
ledged poem, Paracelsus. 

To the young Frenchman of twenty-seven Browning, we 
are told, was indebted for the suggestion of the subject of 
his poem.* This, however, seems of minor importance com- 
pared with the facts already indicated — that Browning's 
father was as familiar with Paracelsus as if that interesting 
empiric had been present in the flesh in the library at 
Camberwell instead of being represented by three goodly 
folios, that he himself had already dabbled in medicine and 
kindred studies, and that Pauline had been prefaced by a 
quotation from the Occult Philosophy of Cornelius Agrippa, 
a work dedicated to that Abbot Tritheim who appears in the 
poem of 1835 as the teacher of Paracelsus. Moreover, it is 
evident from Browning's confession to Miss Barrett concern- 
ing the difficulties arising from the many-sidedness of his 
own nature that it would be natural for him to look with 
interest upon a character such as he conceives Paracelsus to 
have been. Indeed, in Pauline he had confessed — 

" I envy — how I envy him whose soul 
Turns its whole energies to some one end. 



... I would have one joy, 

But one in life, so it were wholly mine, 

One rapture all my soul could fill." 

Louis XV. invited him to be Comptroller of Finance, a position he refused. 
Count Amedee also wrote on financial questions ; his little Catechisme fina7icier 
(1848) was several times reprinted. He published an account of his uncle, who 
died in 1843. ^^ Fortia wrote much on history, but none of his too abund^int 
work has any real value. 

• Mrs. Orr is the authority. See the Life, p. 72, 
F 



66 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Paracelsus, as represented by Browning, is emphatically a 
man of one idea — he " aspired to KNOW." And it is notice 
able that in Pauline Browning had already set forth the 
danger which besets the path of such a man : — 

" This restlessness of passion meets in me 
A craving after knowledge : the sole proof 
Of yet commanding will is in that power 
Repressed ; for I beheld it in its dawn, 
The sleepless harpy with just-budding wings, 
And I considered whether to forego 
All happy ignorant hopes and fears, to live, 
Finding a recompense in its wild eyes ; 
And when I found that I should perish sOy 
I bade its wild eyes close from me for ever." 

Two years after writing these lines Browning represented 
Festus as pleading with the youthful Paracelsus in the garden 
of Wurzburg not to seek his recompense in the wild eyes of 
this sleepless harpy ; and to his pleadings Michal added her 
prophecy — so bitterly recalled fourteen years later by Para- 
celsus — which repeats the very words of Pauline : — 

" You will find all you seek, and perish so I " 

Miss Barrett was indignant that Pdracelsus should be 
termed " an imitation of Shelley, when if Paracelsus was any- 
thing, it was the expression of a new mind, as all might see, 
as / saw." ^ Miss Barrett was perfectly right : yet Emerson 
was not wholly wrong when he wrote that "the greatest 
genius is the most indebted man." " Ah, that was a poet ! " 
exclaimed Browning enthusiastically to Domett, as they 
passed on the staircase at Camberwell a bust of Shelley, 
which Mrs. Leigh Hunt had executed and presented to him. 
Pauline, as Joseph Arnould, another of Browning's early 
friends, emphatically declared, was written "when Shelley 
was his god " ; and Paracelsus was begun but eighteen 
months after Pauline v^2,?, published. The influence oi Alastor 
upon Pauline is evident ; is it absent from Paracelsus ? 
In his preface to Alastor Shelley speaks of "one who 
drinks deep of the fountain of knowledge and is still 

' Letters of R, B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 327. 



SHELLEYS INFLUENCE PERCEPTIBLE 67 

insatiate," of one who experiences a sudden awakening as 
to the need of Love, the ideal of which he vainly seeks ere 
he " descends into an untimely grave." Further, at the close 
of his preface, he even points the moral that those "who 
keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither 
in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these and 
such as they have their appointed curse, . . . Those who love 
not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives." Similar to this 
is the language of Festus in Browning's poem : — 

" How can that course be safe which from the first 
Produces carelessness of human love ? " 

Browning did not imitate Shelley, but he could not fail to 
read and interpret the life of the historical Paracelsus in the 
light of the poetic creations which so filled and coloured his 
own imagination. This is true with regard to his general 
conception, for the Paracelsus of history was by no means as 
indifferent to the love of human kind as, for poetic purposes, 
Browning has chosen to represent him. It is also true, at 
times, in regard to details. The " grey hair, faded hands, and 
furrowed brow " * ascribed to the Paracelsus of eight-and- 
twenty, are not derived from history, but from the " scattered 
hair, sered by the autumn of strange suffering," and the 
" listless hands " oi A las tor ; nor can one doubt that the glitter- 
ing eye, " brighter than ever " as the end draws near, had its 
origin in the lustre of the dark eyes " as in a furnace burning " 
of the same poem. 

Nor are the echoes of Shelley confined to his Alastor. 
From some elements in the myth of Prometheus Browning 
unmistakably evolved the conception of his Aprile as 
not only the lover and the poet,^ but as the potential 
sculptor, painter, orator, and musician. Browning was so 
fascinated by the Prometheus legend that among his early 
dreams was that of endeavouring to " restore the Prometheus 
TTvp<^6pog as Shelley did the Auo/ifvoc." ^ This dream, like 
the combination in Aprile of the spirit of Love with the spirit 

» Cf. Part II. of the poem. 

* As will be pointed out in its place, the influence of the story of Sordello is 
doubtless also to be traced in the evolution of Aprile. 
' Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 38. 



68 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

of the artist, is due to Shelley, whose Prometheus when 
unbound not only listens to " the low voice of Love . . . and 
Music " but sees in vision 

" the progeny immortal 
Of painting, sculpture, and rapt Poesy." 

But other things contributed to the evolution of Para- 
celsus : certain aspects of Browning's character, and various 
mental experiences of his own. He is described at the time 
of the appearance of this poem as " full of ambition, eager for 
success, eager for fame — and what's more, determined to 
conquer fame and to achieve success." ^ Ten years later he 
himself wrote, " I have never been frightened of the world, 
nor mistrustful of my power to deal with it, and get my 
purpose out of it, if once I thought it worth while," and he 
spoke of *' meaning, on the whole, to be a poet, if not i/ie poet 
... for I am vain and ambitious some nights." Is this 
wholly unlike the mood of the Swiss student at Wurzburg, 
as the autumn sun is setting behind St. Saviour's church? 
The Paracelsus of nineteen is represented as breaking away 
from the routine of Abbot Tritheim and refusing to study 
in " one of Learning's many palaces, after approved example," 
as he preferred to study among men. The English student 
of seventeen had in the same way found the shackles of 
Gower Street intolerable. Paracelsus, again, is depicted as 
a youth of " wondrous plans and dreams and hopes," many of 
which were doomed to failure ; he who drew the picture, after 
indulging in " plans and dreams and hopes," had recently 
termed the dwelling-place of his soul a " fool's paradise," and 
had proclaimed the first-fruits of his genius a bitter " crab " 
apple. When, therefore, Monclar suggested for poetic treat- 
ment the life of Paracelsus, such experiences must have tended 
to reveal to Browning the potentialities of the subject, and 
must to some extent have coloured the manner of its dramatic 
presentation. 

"The liberties I have taken with my subject are very 
trifling," said Browning in a note at the end of his poem, 
" and the reader may slip the foregoing scenes between the 
leaves of any memoir of Paracelsus he pleases, by way of 

' Mrs. Bridell-Fox wrote thus to a correspondent. Mrs. Orr, Zi/e, p. 93. 



FACT AND FICTION COMMINGLED 69 

commentary." And, for proof, he proceeded to translate a 
brief biography. But in this memoir one finds no faithful 
Festus, and one finds no Michal — maid, wife, and mother — the 
earliest figure, and but lightly sketched, in his great gallery 
of women ; these, like the shadowy Italian poet Aprile, are 
wholly his creation. For the opening scene he had, at least, 
but a few scattered hints, and his own experiences would 
count for far more than any hints he had. The incidents of 
the second scene have no historical basis whatever, and the 
influence of Shelley is manifest. The third and fourth parts 
are more historical in outline : but not even .^schylus him- 
self could be more amazed, were he summoned from the 
grave to listen to the lyric strains of Prometheus Unbound in 
place of his own lost drama, than Paracelsus would be, were 
he called forth and confronted with the splendid vision of his 
death-bed with which the poem closes. By this, Leigh Hunt, 
who somewhat sharply criticized portions of Browning's poem, 
was so moved that he called it 

" An Orphic song indeed, 
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts 
To their own music chanted ! " ^ 

Browning, therefore, in his note is speaking not as an historian, 
but as a poet: Paracelsus is a poetic "commentary" upon 
the facts of a life which he had sympathetically studied. 

It is, however, quite a mistake to imagine that he engaged 
in " vast research among contemporary records," or that 
before his poem appeared there had been nothing written on 
Paracelsus save a "caricature drawn by bitter enemies." 
Browning's research was not vast : the erudition, seen espe- 
cially in his notes, is more apparent than real ; nor did he 
undertake his subject in the spirit of a Ruskin when writing 
Modern Painters? He opened his father's volumes and he 
found in the first five pages of the preface by Bitiskius a 
defence of the life and work of Paracelsus, the main outlines 

• Quoted by Hunt in his review of Paracelsus from Coleridge's lines on 
Wordsworth's Prelude. 

■ Browning's enthusiasm would doubtless grow as he proceeded, as was the 
case with a more modern student : — " An fur et a mesure que j'avangais dans 
I'etude de ses cjeuvres, a la defiance initiale succeda un curieux interet, puis k la fin 
unequasi-admiiation." La medkint occulte dc Paracelse, L. Durey, Paris, 1900, p. 54. 



70 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

of which he adopted, poetically developed and idealized. 
Paracelsus had died in 1541, and, if it is true that both before 
and after death he had lacked neither foes nor detractors, it 
is equally true that he had wanted neither disciples nor 
defenders. His secretary, John Oporinus the "arch-knave," 
who appears but to disappear in the opening lines of the 
fourth part of the poem, had lifted up his heel against his 
master by circulating evil tales, but had lived to repent and 
recant. During the days when Shakespeare was a schoolboy 
at Stratford, Thomas Erastus, long Professor at Heidelberg, 
had given currency to the bitter words of Oporinus in his 
two lengthy Latin Dispiitationes. In the next century the 
learned Hermann Couring, whose epitaph describes him as a 
counsellor of kings and princes, learned in the law of nations, 
skilled in the practice and theory of all philosophy, a philo- 
logist of distinction, an orator, a poet, a physician, and a 
theologian, was another opponent of what was long termed 
the " New Medicine." But Couring, in turn, was vigorously 
opposed by a sturdy disciple of Paracelsus, the able Professor 
of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, Olaus 
Borrichius. 

It was in 1658, during the lifetime of these two dis- 
tinguished scholars, in the year when the September winds 
were howling round the deathbed of the great Protector, that 
Frederick Bitiskius published at Geneva the three folio volumes 
of the works of Paracelsus which Browning used for his poem. 
Bitiskius, in his preface, stood forth to defend Paracelsus and 
his works from the fouler aspersions of his detractors, yet he 
was not blind — nor was Browning who followed him — to 
faults : he would not speak of the " divine " Paracelsus, nor 
would he represent him as an Achilles made invulnerable to 
evil by being plunged in the waters of a moral Styx, rather, 
he apologetically pleaded, had be been immersed in the 
stream of Original Sin. To Bitiskius, Paracelsus was Chemi- 
corum facile princeps and gifted with " an inexhaustible desire 
to probe the secrets of nature," but one might as well search 
his volumes for the lyrics of Browning's poem as for the 
thoughts which it contains. The record of aspiration, defeat 
and attainment — all that really constitutes the spiritual history 
of the poem — is of Browning's creation, it is his " commentary," 



THE UNION OF POWER AND LOVE 71 

just as the main thought of the poem, the need of the union 
of Power and Love, is Browning's life-long creed ; first ex- 
pounded in his first acknowledged work Paracelsus, reiterated 
again and again, till it found final expression in the Reverie 
of the aged poet of seventy-seven, published on the very day 
he died, in the Asolando volume of 1889. 

To return, for a moment, to the assertion that the extreme 
erudition of Browning's notes is often more apparent than 
real. As few readers ever trouble to consult these notes, 
this may seem hardly worth emphasizing. Yet the matter 
is not devoid of interest as supplying a further indication 
of the obvious manner in which much of his very wide and 
varied learning was acquired. For example, when Browning 
mentions that "it appears from his treatise de Phlebotomia 
and elsewhere " that Paracelsus had discovered the circulation 
of the blood and the sanguification of the heart," this state- 
ment undoubtedly seems to savour of " vast research." But 
in reality Browning is merely copying from Bitiskius two 
marginal headings which state, Paracel. 7iouit circulationem 
sanguinis — et sanguificationem cordis, and incorporating a 
few words from the text where mention is made of the 
Tractatio de Phlebotomia and other works. To take but one 
further example : when he speaks of " Franciscus the servant 
of Paracelsus who describes in a letter to Neander a successful 
projection at which he was present," this does not really 
indicate any intimate knowledge of the household of 
Paracelsus or of the correspondence of the now-forgotten 
sixteenth-century schoolmaster, Michael Neander. It simply 
indicates that he had read the preface of Bitiskius, to whom 
he so frequently and so frankly refers. That Browning 
should have to study his subject is obvious — ^just as Shake- 
speare read Holinshed's Chronicles, and Tennyson worked 
"hard and unceasingly during two years at Queen Mary and 
consulted some twenty works." ^ But Paracelsus, a poem of 
over four thousand lines, as its author wrote in a discarded 
preface, "had not been imagined six months" before it 
was completed ; and although he faithfully consulted the 
works referred to or cited by Bitiskius and others, yet, it 

' Memoir, by his son, vol. ii. p. 176. 



72 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

might fairly be said that the so-called " sources " of his poem 
are practically contained in a few pages of Bitiskius, sundry 
passages in the works of Paracelsus himself, and in that 
interesting little octavo of 1620, the Vitae Germanoriim 
Medicorum ^ of Melchior Adam. But the most important 
source of all is Robert Browning. 

The preface to Paracelsus is dated 15 March, 1835: a 
month later Browning obtained through Fox an introduction 
to Moxon the poet-publisher of Dover Street, Piccadilly, 
whose Sonnets had appeared about the same time as Pauline. 
But "it was a flat time," says Sir Henry Taylor in his AtUo- 
biography ; "publishers would have nothing to say to poets, 
regarding them as unprofitable people." In spite of favourable 
reviews and of a second edition within six months, his own 
Artevelde had not paid expenses ; after two and a half years, 
only three hundred copies of Tennyson's last volume had 
been sold ; and Moxon had published both. So Moxon 
declined Paracelsus : and the publisher of Pauline declined 
Paracelsus. Fox, however, eventually secured a publisher. 
In April Browning had written of his poem "there are a few 
precious bold bits here and there, and the drift and scope 
are awfully radical " ; this commended it the more to the 
ultra-liberal Effingham Wilson, whose name still lingers after 
seventy years at the Royal Exchange. But the poem 
had to be published at the expense of Browning's father. 
A second time, therefore. Fox had proved himself a 
" literary father " ; but as a reviewer he was silent till 
November. 

When Browning returned from Russia in the summer of 
1834, about a month before the death of Coleridge — to be 
followed ere the year closed by that of his friend and school- 
fellow Lamb — he had found that the literary event of the day 
was the appearance of Philip van Artevelde by Henry Taylor. 
Lockhart, Taylor's friend, welcomed the new "dramatic 
romance" in twenty pages of the June Quarterly ; the July 

' This prints in full the epitaph of Paracelsus to which Browning thus refers in 
note (6), "his epitaph which affirms, 'Bona sua in pauperes dislribuenda coUo- 
candaque erogavit,' honoravit, or orditiavit, for accounts differ." Did Browning 
then carefully compare even the versions of an epitaph ? Melchior Adam supplies 
the answer ; to the word " erogavit " he adds a marginal note, Alii, honoravit vel 
ordinavit. 



RECEPTION OF "PARACELSUS" 73 

Edinburgh followed with the same generous space ; fifteen 
columns did not suffice for the Athenczum reviewer to utter 
all he would. 

Paracelsus, the "dramatic poem" of 1835, was very 
differently received. The Quarterly was silent — Browning 
knew no Lockhart ; the Edinburgh was as mute as Black- 
wood, wherein Christopher North, the self-proclaimed patron 
of young poets, would neither then nor at any time deign 
to worry his readers with the name of Browning. In 
1833, the AthencBum had devoted a hundred lines to the 
anonymous Patcline ; in 1835 its reviewer found relief for 
what mind and soul he had in seventy-three words : — 

" Paracelsus, by Robert Browning. There is talent in this 
dramatic poem (in which is attempted a picture of the mind of this 
noted character), but it is dreamy and obscure. Writers would do well 
to remember (by way of example) that though it is not dififiicult 
to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him 
and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not became of these 
characteristics — but in spite of them [22 Aug., 1835]." 

This, wrote Browning in 1845, "is a most flattering 
sample of what the ' craft ' had in store for me " ; elsewhere 
he speaks of " the reviews and newspapers that laughed my 
Paracelsus to scorn." "Every journal that thought worth 
while to allude to the poem at all, treated it with entire 
contempt . . . out of a long string of notices one vied with 
its predecessor in disgust at my ' rubbish,' as their word 
went." ^ There was, however, as he explains, one notable 
exception, in the pages of the Examiner. 

Fox's silence was due to his absorption in political 
journalism. He had recently been appointed leader-writer 
on the New Sun. Browning had kept in touch with him ; 
he had contributed a sonnet to the Monthly Repository 
in 1834,^ and speaks of having shown Fox other poems — 
probably jfohaTines Agricola and Porphyria! s Lover, written in 
St. Petersburg, and both first printed in the Repository of 1836. 

Another champion, however, had in the meantime entered 
the lists. Two weeks after the Athenceiim notice there ap- 
peared in the Examiner a review of three columns which 

' Letters of R. B. and E. B, B., vol. i. pp. 2o8 and 323. 
* See Appendix A. 



74 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

began, "Since the publication of Philip van Artevelde we 
have met with no such evidences of poetical genius and 
general intellectual power as are contained in this volume." 
And the closing words were : — 

"It is some time since we read a work of more unequivocal 
power than this. We conclude that its author is a young man, as 
we do not recollect his having published before. If so, we may 
safely predict for him a brilliant career, if he continues true to the 
present promise of his genius. He possesses all the elements of a 
fine poet." 

This notice was from the pen of John Forster,^ an able, 
pushing, rising young critic and journalist of three and 
twenty — one month older than Browning. Unknown to 
each other they had been fellow-students at Gower Street 
in 1828: unknown to each other they had been among 
those who gathered at the grave of Edmund Kean 
at Richmond in May, 1833.'"^ Three months after the 
Exanmier review they became acquainted at the house of 
Macready the actor, and remained, for many years at least, 
firm friends. 

Browning's introduction to Macready, and thus indirectly 
to Forster, was due to Fox, who, after having moved from 
Hackney to Dalston, had now settled at Bayswater, in 
Craven Hill, next door to the Novellos, whose eldest daughter 
had become Mary Cowden Clarke.^ In his little old- 
fashioned sitting-room, with its chintzes and black-framed 
engravings, Browning read aloud the manuscript of Para- 
celsus ; thither he came, "with a quick light step," a few 
weeks later, when concerned about that momentous question, 
a publisher — "slim and dark and very handsome," writes 

* Forster was born 2 April, 1812, at Newcastle. He, also, was precocious. 
"When he was sixteen a two-act play by him was performed at Newcastle. He 
came to London in 1828, studied law at Gower Street, and entered the Inner 
Temple. He at once made literary friends, among them Leigh Hunt and Lamb. 
In 1833 he was writing for four journals, and was soon appointed chief literary 
and dramatic critic of the Examiner. In 1834 he moved to "his well-known 
chambers," 58, Lincoln's Inn Fields — afterwards the haunt of his numerous circle. 
This house, in the middle of the west side of the square, is recognizable at once by 
the large semicircular portico which extends over the entrances to two houses. 

- A tablet within the parish church — where Thomson of the Seasons is also 
buried — commemorates Kean. 

' Cowden Clarke introduced Browning to Moxon, 



THE FIRST MEETING WITH MACREADY 75 

Fox's daughter — " and may I hint it ? just a trifle of a 
dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid gloves and such 
things : quite ' the glass of fashion and the mould of form.' " * 
But the day of this visit, it should be remarked, was his 
birthday. Six months later, on 27 November — the month 
in which Paracelsus was reviewed (at last) by Fox and by 
Leigh Hunt — in the same little sitting-room Browning met 
Macready. 

For Browning the interview was epoch-making. His love 
of the drama was strong ; he felt proud to have shaken the 
hand of Edmund Kean, whose little green silk purse it was 
afterwards his joy to possess ; ^ he now met another great 
actor whom for years he had admired. On Wednesday, 
21 October, 1830, he had seen the Hamlet of Macready, to 
whom he afterwards described it as " one of the most vivid 
recollections I had meant to keep as a joy for ever." During 
seven years Macready and he were to be close friends, and 
for Macready he was to write three — perhaps four — plays, 
two of which were to be represented. Macready, always 
sensitive and eager for appreciation, was in low spirits and 
despondent ; he felt slighted and shelved ; all the more 
therefore, would he appreciate the "simple and enthusiastic 
manner " of one whom he described as looking and speaking 
" more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw." The 
entry in his Diary reads : " I took Mr. Browning on and 
requested to be allowed to improve my acquaintance with 
him. He expressed himself warmly, as gratified by the 
proposal." Ten days later Macready, deep in Paracelsus, 
wrote : " the writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of 
his time." So quickly did the friendship ripen that, one 
month after their first meeting, Browning was rumbling 
along in Billing's coach from the " Blue Posts " in Holborn, 
past the Welsh Harp and Edgware, to the pretty little 
village of Elstree, to spend the last night of the old year 
in Macready's dearly loved country home. Here among 
other guests he first met John Forster, whose greeting 

* Mrs. Orr, Life, p. 92. 

* Sold at the Irving sale. 

' See Macready's Reminiscences and Selections from his Diary and Letters^ 
vol. i. p. 474. 



^e THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

was, "Did you see a little notice of you I wrote in the 
Examiner ? " ^ 

With the appearance of Paracelsus Browning thus began 
to take a place in the literary world. Few copies of his 
poem were sold : no second edition was called for ; he even 
considered "that he was not acknowledged much by the 
public till the generation succeeding ours," wrote Domett 
in his Diary in 1872; and added, "I suppose he knows 
best, but I should have thought his reputation had grown 
gradually from 1835, or the time of the publication of 
Paracelsus, the genius of which was most cordially recognized 
and welcomed by a good many of his own contemporaries, to 
say the least." Both Browning and Domett were right. 
Public acknowledgment Browning had not ; nor did Para- 
celsus open to him the doors of Holland House and Lans- 
downe House, as was the case with the author of Artevelde. 
"If I had continued to be as much liked and sought in 
society as I was in 1834-5," wrote Henry Taylor, "my 
time and strength would have been wasted and I might have 
become good for little else." But Browning had an audience 
" fit though few." He was happy in his quiet visits to Fox 
and Eliza Flower at Craven Hill, where he first met Richard 
Hengist Home, soon to succeed Fox as editor of the 
Repository ; in his visits to Elstree, where was no lack of 
pleasant and intellectual society ; and in his more frequent 
visits to the " well-known chambers " of John Forster, whose 
intimate he at once became. It was in Forster's rooms that 
he met in the early part of 1836 the precocious Bulwer ; 
Laman Blanchard, " a dear-tempered genial friend of every- 
body," for whose Lyric Offerings he had run to Bond Street 
eight years before ; artists like Clarkson Stanfield and 
Maclise — for one of whose pictures he was to write, in those 
very rooms, the lines which developed into his Ifi a Gondola ; 
Talfourd, Lamb's friend and biographer and Macready's 
staunch supporter, who was at once lawyer, poet, essayist 
and dramatist — to him Browning, a few years later, "affec- 
tionately" dedicated Pippa Passes — and that more delightful 
lawyer-poet, Procter, of whom, using the pseudonym by 
which he was best known, the dedication of Colombe's 

* Robert Browning, rersonalia, by Edmund Gossc, p. 39. 





[1835I 

FROM AN ENGRAVING I'.V J. C. ARMYTAGE 



AT THE "ION" SUPPER -jy 

Birthday speaks : — " no one loves and honours Barry Cornwall 
more than does Robert Browning." Forster, Talfourd and 
Procter formed the triumvirate of friends who were then 
helping Leigh Hunt with the Examiner, Hunt was at 
that time living in Cheyne Row, where he had Carlyle, with 
whom he had been several years acquainted, as a neighbour. 
Among his treasured possessions was a lock of Milton's 
hair ; and this, in token of appreciation, he now shared with 
Browning.^ 

One incident reveals the position which was at once taken 
among such men by the author of Paracelsus. At the famous 
Ion supper, in May, 1836, when Talfourd's home was thronged 
with lawyers, artists, actors, and authors, Browning found him- 
self remaining seated while the other guests rose with one 
accord at the call of their host to drink to the "Poets of 
England," a toast which Talfourd associated with the name of 
the author oi Paracelsus. Among those who rose to lift a glass 
to the youthful poet was a man of sixty, over whose declining 
years Browning was to watch with filial devotion, and one 
to whom he "always said that he owed more than to any 
contemporary " — Walter Savage Landor. Another guest, 
five years Landor's senior, leaned across the table and 
remarked, " I am proud to drink to your health, Mr. Brown- 
ing!" It was William Wordsworth, who may or may not 
have been aware that Leigh Hunt had recently classed 
Paracelsus with the still unpublished Prelude, and that two 
months before the night on which he raised his glass to the 
youth of four-and-twenty who " looked still younger than he 
was," John Forster had written thus : — 

" Without the slightest hesitation we name Mr. Browning at once 
with Shelley, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. He has entitled himself 
to a place among the acknowledged poets of the age. This opinion 
will possibly startle many persons, but it is most sincere. . . . Mr. 

* The lock was given to Hunt by Dr. Batty, the physician, "a man of 
excellent character." Batty had it from Hoole, the translator of Tasso, "and 
Iloole, though a bad translator, was a very honest man." Hoole had it from Dr. 
Johnson, "whose scrupulous veracity as to matters of fact is well known," and 
Johnson from some unknown person who had it from Addison. (Letter from 
Leigh Hunt to Robert Browning, 31 December, 1856, on the occasion of the 
publication of Aurora Leigh, printed in the Cornhill Magazine.) 



7S THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Browning is a man of genius, he has in himself all the elements of a 
great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic ... he has written a 
book that will live." 

Browning never sought to disown the child of 1835 as he 
would fain have done with that of 1833 : ^^^ eleven years the 
title-page of each successive work bore the words " By the 
author of Paracelsus." 



CHAPTER V 

EARLY FRIENDS 

" The set " — Captain Pritchard, of Battersea — William Curling Young 
— The Dowsons — Joseph Arnould, his career and correspondence — Alfred 
Domett^ — His acquaintance with Browning traced — Their close friendship 
— Domett the original of Warmg — His departure for New Zealand — 
Mention of him in The Gttardian Angel — His return foreshadowed. 

BROWNING'S increasing acquaintance among literary 
people was in every way advantageous to him, 
making easier the path of his honourable ambition 
and widening his intellectual horizon. But he brought no 
starved heart or mind to Macready's house or Forster's 
chambers. He had already formed, nearer home, a 
fellowship of some half-dozen comrades like-minded with 
himself, in whose company he spent many hours of 
discussion, many hours of relaxation. They resembled in 
some degree that other group of young enthusiasts who in 
Cambridge, a little earlier, 

" held debate, a band 
Of youthful friends, on mind and art, 
And labour, and the changing mart, 
And all the framework of the land." ^ 

The bonds which united the members of this London 
fellowship were in each case severed only by death. Almost 
the latest to join its ranks was the one who beyond all other 
men was to Browning in his earlier manhood what Arthur 
Hallam was to Tennyson, the " friend of his bosom," the 
" more than a brother " — Alfred Domett, who was, in 
essential characteristics, the prototype of Waring. 

' In Memoriam, stanza 87. 



$0 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The oldest member, and in a sense the originator of " the 
set," as the friends called themselves, was Captain Pritchard, 
of Battersea, who, as we have seen, put Browning in the way 
of attending lectures at Guy's Hospital. His elasticity of 
mind bade defiance to advancing years, and enabled him to 
associate unconstrainedly with those who were very con- 
siderably his juniors. He could have said, as Dr. Johnson 
did to Langton aud Beauclerk, " Come, my lads, I'll have a 
frisk with you," without any sense of incongruity being sug- 
gested. One peculiarity he had, " he never let anyone know 
where he lived." Even when seriously ill he would not 
forego the secrecy of his abode. For women he had a 
chivalrous regard, and he left his money between two maiden 
ladies, "for," said he, '* women should be provided for, as 
they cannot earn their living." The date of this sentiment — 
1859 — is instructive. 

Captain Pritchard had, as was natural, friends connected 
with ships and ship-building, George Frederick Young and 
Christopher Dowson by name ; and he was, it appears, the 
means of introducing Browning to their circle. Between 
Browning and the sons of these two men an intimacy 
speedily arose. It is convenient to give at once a list of 
" the set," otherwise " The Colloquials," as put on record by 
one of themselves. The names are Pritchard, Christopher 
and Joseph Dowson, William Curling Young, Alfred Domett 
— these two were cousins — Joseph Arnould, and Robert 
Browning. The "Colloquials," whose palmy days seem to 
have been from about 1835 to 1840, used to meet at the 
Youngs' home at Limehouse, then a river-side village. 
They lived in a detached square house, at the corner of 
Church Row, close to St. Anne's Church, with big bow- 
windows looking northward and eastward across fields to 
the River Lea. Mr. Young was Member of Parliament for 
Tynemouth from 1832 to 1837, and one of the first directors of 
the New Zealand Company. A portrait of his son William, 
which has been preserved, depicts him as tall, handsome, and 
intellectual-looking. He emigrated to New Zealand, but 
unhappily lost his life by drowning in the river Wairoa. His 
death in 1842 caused the first gap in the ranks of "the set." 
Many years later Browning, then in Italy, was asked, " Do 



THE DOWSONS 8i 

you remember William Young ? " His emphatic answer was 
in the form of another question, " Who that knew William 
Young could ever forget him ? " 

The Dowsons were near neighbours of the Youngs. 
They also lived in Church Row, and the eldest son, 
Browning's " dear Chris. Dowson," was a constant intimate 
of the poet's early manhood. In 1836 he married Mary 
Domett, Alfred's sister. He was of a nervous and mercurial 
temperament, devoted to the theatre, and fond of entertaining 
his friends. After his marriage he lived in Albion Terrace, 
Limehouse, as near to his old home as possible. Here and 
at his summer retreat, a cottage at Woodford in Epping 
Forest, Browning was a frequent visitor. Dowson's life, how- 
ever, was not a long one, for he died at Blackheath, in 1848, 
of consumption. His brother, Joseph, seems to have been 
an equally amiable character — "the unvaryingly happy Joe, 
that is Joe who tries to be unvaryingly happy," as he once 
described himself. Browning, it is recorded, would drop 
in upon him at his office and find him intent upon a 
contribution to Olla Podrida, the magazine of the " Collo- 
quials," rather than on the rise and fall of the price of copper. 
Occasional visitors to the debates, though not of the inner 
circle, were Field Talfourd, brother of the author of Ion, two 
cousins of Domett, Oldfield by name, and, it has been sug- 
gested, Benjamin Jowett. But the inclusion of the future 
Master of Balliol would seem to be more than doubtful, and 
to have arisen, possibly, from the fact that like the three most 
important members of " the set " — Browning, Arnould, and 
Domett — he, too, was a native of Camberwell. At any rate, 
if he ever was present it must have been on an occasion when 
Browning was away ; for, writing to a friend on 12 June, 
1865, he speaks of making a new friend in "Mr. Browning, 
the poet," in terms which preclude the idea of an earlier 
acquaintance.* The later meetings of " the set " were held 
in a room hired at the " British Coffee Tavern " in Cockspur 
Street, W.C., and the severity of the debates was tempered 
by a half-yearly dinner either at " the old ' Artichoke ' at 

' See Life and Letters of Benjamin Jaiuett, by Evelyn Abbot and Lewis 
Campbell, vol. i. p. 400, 
G 



82 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Blackwall, with a bow-window projecting over the Thames, a 
forest of masts in the foreground and Shooter's Hill for the 
background," ^ or at the " Star and Garter " at Richmond, 
The " British Coffee Tavern " and the " Artichoke " have 
alike disappeared. 

To Joseph Arnould and Alfred Domett, quite apart from 
their interest as individuals and the poet's friends, students 
of the life of Browning are greatly indebted, to the one for 
his admirable letters, to the other for the diary, with its 
embodied reminiscences, which he kept on his return from 
his thirty years' absence in New Zealand. Both men, when 
Browning first knew them, were studying for the Bar ; but 
whereas Arnould had the law in his bones, Domett's spirit 
was chafed by its laborious and wordy technicalities. Both 
men had had what Browning missed, an University training. 
Both were ambitious, in their several ways, and each attained 
to eminence in his chosen calling. 

Joseph Arnould, son of a doctor living in the Peckham 
Road, was described by Browning to Miss Barrett as " an 
Oxford Prize Poet, and an admirable dear good fellow." 
Educated at Charterhouse and at Wadham College (where 
he afterwards became a Fellow) he gained the Newdigate in 
1834, and had the honour of reciting his Hospice of St. 
Bernard in the Sheldonian theatre amid thunders of applause 
begotten of a timely reference to Waterloo and the Iron 
Duke, who was present as Chancellor of the University. 
Later he worked hard at his profession, produced genial 
verse as the Poet Laureate of his circuit, wrote for the 
reviews, and was so successful as a journalist that he was 
offered the editorship of the Daily Neivs^ founded by Dickens 
and Forster. About his verse he had no illusions. He had, 
as he assured Domett in 1843, too just an appreciation of 
poetry to " add another to the metrical prosers of the day." 
He had married happily in 1841 ; and sticking to his proper 
last became, in 1848, "Arnould on Marine Insurance,"^ and, 
in 1859, "Sir Joseph" as a Judge of the High Court at 
Bombay. After ten years of successful work in India — one 

* Letter of Arnould to Domett, November, 184$. 
' A work now (1909) in its eighth edition. 




ALKRKl) DOMKTT 

(i8;561 

KHOM A UUAUINt; liV I.ANCE 



ARNOULD AND DOMETT 83 

of his judgments was so much admired by the people of 
Bombay that it was printed on a leaflet in letters of gold and 
widely circulated — he retired, to live first at Naples, and 
then at Florence, where he died in 1886. His graphic letters 
to Domett contain many glimpses of Browning and "the 
set." Here, for example, are his words as to Browning, 
written in July, 1844: — 

" At Browning's especially you are a constant topic ; nothing can 
exceed the kindness with which he speaks of you, in fact he is a 
tnie friend — he has an energy of kindness about him which never 
slumbers — in me he seems to take a thoroughly friendly interest, 
and it is solely by his means that I have obtained an entrance at 
last into Periodical Literature, which I have so long been endeavour- 
ing through less zealous friends to procure. He is a noble fellow. 
His Ufe so pure, so energetic, so simple, so laborious, so loftily 
enthusiastic. It is impossible to know and not to love him." 

This outburst is followed by a brief description of the 
poet's sister, the truth of which will be cordially acknowledged 
by all who had the privilege of knowing her. 

" Sarianna, as my wife now always calls her, we are both very 
much attached to — she is marvellously clever, such fine, clear animal 
spirits, talks much and well, and yet withal is so simply and deeply 
good hearted that it is a real pleasure to be with her." 

We are now come to the last, and, if words mean any- 
thing, the closest of these earlier friends. Alfred Domett 
who was born in 181 1, and lived in Camberwell Grove, had a 
strain of adventure in his blood. His father ran away to sea 
as a boy, served as a middy under Parker against the Dutch 
at the battle of the Dogger Bank, in 178 1 ; then forsook the 
navy for the merchant service, and, marrying, became a ship 
owner.^ He retained, however, a passion for the sea, and 
kept his own yacht. One of his connections, his son's diary 
records, was Admiral Sir William Domett, K.C.B., "one of 
Nelson's captains, and the friend and familiar of that famous 
man." 

Alfred Domett attended a school at Stockwell. " The 
place," he wrote in 1875, "was like an old country house, 

' He and Mr. Young both married into the family of the Curlings of Denmark 
IIUl. 



84 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

with a park." The description is pleasant, yet equally with 
Browning (and, it may be added, with Tennyson) he looked 
back to this period of his life with anything but satisfaction. 
" I loathe the recollection of my earlier school years there, 
though we used to have some fun, too, now and then." He 
went up to St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1829, but after 
four years* residence left the university without taking a 
degree. Instead, he published a volume of Poems, which 
made no great stir ; and had his headquarters at his father's 
house, described by a correspondent — a sister of Sir Frederick 
Young — as a "bright, unconventional, if somewhat rough 
house, where there was always such a lively atmosphere of 
freedom, interest and gay fun." Facilities for travel, too, 
were granted him, considerable for those days. He wandered 
to Canada in 1834, visited Italy and the Tyrol, and printed 
in 1839 Venice, a small volume of poetical impressions. 
Venice had, it seems, something to do with his friendship 
with Browning ; but a more potent factor, in all probability, 
was his admiration for Browning's early poetry : 

" It all grew out of the books I write ; 
They find such favour in his sight 
That he slaughters you with savage looks 
Because you don't admire my books." ^ 

How, we shall presently be able to infer. But the admira- 
tion is borne out by one of Browning's letters. " I shall 
certainly," he writes to his friend {22 May, 1842), "never be 
quite wanting in affection for essays that have got me your 
love, as you say and I believe." Exactly when the two first 
met, it is not possible to say. Domett mentions in his diary 
(1883) some remarks made to him by Browning "somewhere 
between 1835 and 1840." There are, however, at least two 
indications in the diary which show that he was rather in- 
definite as to dates. The earliest actual evidence of acquaint- 
ance is Browning's letter of 7 March, 1840, accompanying a 
copy of Sordello, which he asks Domett to accept — " Pray 
accept the book, and do not reject me," The gift is some- 
what formally inscribed, " Alfred Domett, Esq., with R. B.'s 
best regards " ; whence it is reasonable to suppose that the 

' Time's Revenges. 



''A FRIEND, OVER THE SEA" 85 

intimacy was at an early stage. Be that as it may, intimacy 
rapidly ripened into friendship. The glimpses that we get of 
this time are mainly retrospective, when Domett had ex- 
changed London for the antipodes. "The 7th of May last 
was my birthday," writes Browning on 22 May, 1842, "and 
on that day I dined with dear Chris. Dowson and your sister. 
We were alone, and talked of you and little else." Again on 
13 July of the same year he recalls the talks they used to 
enjoy "over here or at Limehouse" ; and on 13 December 

" I could easily fancy," he writes, " you were no farther off than 
Brighton — not to say Exeter — all this while, so much of you is here, 
and there, and wherever I have been used to see or think about you. 
I have wished myself with you less often than I expected — and no 
doubt the reason is, that you are not so surely away, after all." 

Again, on 15 May, 1843: — 

" I wish I had seen more of you, for I forget nothing I did see, 
and so should be richer and better able to bear dull evenings — but 
the time will come yet." 

And on 8 November, when there was some idea of Domett 
coming home : — 

" There you walk past our pond-rail (picking up one of the 
fallen horse-chestnuts), and now our gate-latch clicks, and now — 
. . . 'Tis worth while running away to be so wished for again." 

On 23 February, 1845, ^ similar thought is expressed. 

" You will find no change ... in this room, where I remember 
you so well. I turned my head, last line, to see if it was you come 
up, with hat above the holly hedge." 

Two features emerge most prominently from these letters ; 
the first. Browning's deep affection for his friend ; the second, 
his intense belief in that friend's intellectual powers. He 
felt for Domett " a real love — better love than I had supposed 
I was fit for." And as to the second, " I do," he writes 
(5 March, 1843), " most truly, look for great works from 
you." He hopes for " a * rousing word ' (as the old Puritans 
phrase it) from New Zealand." "Write more," he says, 
" and justify my prophecy then and now." There emerges, 
too, the picture of a true and noble friendship, marked by 



S6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

generosity and unselfishness on either side. We do well to 
imagine the repeated interchange of helpful counsel, the long 
talks and discussions at whose end the two would " see truth 
dawn together," the sympathy of heart as well as of mind. 
Domett could criticize his friend's work on occasion, but grew 
very irate at what he considered unfair treatment of it by 
other people. Thus, in 1841, he sent Browning some lines in 
manuscript " on a certain critique on Pippa Passes." These 
lines began with an expression of scorn for the small- 
mindedness of the unnamed critic, who is compared to a 
black squat beetle which 

" Has knocked himself full-butt with blundering trouble 
Against a mountain he can neither double 
Nor ever hope to scale. So, like a free, 
Pert, self-complacent scarabaeus, he 
Takes it into his horny head to swear 
There's no such thing as any mountain there ! " 

The care with which this enthusiastic champion cherished 
Browning's letters, as well as the copies of his works which 
the poet sent to him from time to time, speaks for itself. 
Among the reminiscences in his diary there is a glimpse of 
the home life of the Brownings at this period. He recalls 
Mrs. Browning's pride in her son, and how affectionate he 
was towards her. 

" On one occasion, in the act of tossing a little roll of music from 
the table to the piano^ he thought it had touched her head in passing 
her, and I remember how he ran to her to apologize and caress her, 
though I think she had not felt it. His father used to speak of his 
son as 'beyond him,' alluding to his Paracelsuses and Sordellos ; 
though I fancy he altered his tone very much on this subject at 
a later period." 

The whole family were at one in their liking for Domett, and 
their regret at losing him. 

It is probable that a variety of motives influenced Domett 
in forming what seems to have been rather a sudden deter- 
mination to leave England ; a growing distaste for the law, 
disappointment at the little recognition which his writings 
won, and that instinctive desire for expansion which has 
made colonists in every age. The decision, at any rate, was 



THE PROTOTYPE OF "WARING" S7 

as stoutly maintained as it was quickly formed. " To have 
asked you not to go" wrote Arnould later, " would have been 
as wild and hopeless as to request the spring tide with 
compliments to defer its daily flow." Something of this 
determination one seems to read in Domett's face, as it 
appears in Lance's drawing. The eyes are downcast, under 
heavy lids, which is always something of a disguise ; power 
is discernible in the features, though qualified by a certain 
indolence. The head- and neck-gear are suggestive of 
Waring's 

" great grass hat and kerchief black," 

and in conjunction with a loose and ample cloak lend an air 
of mystery to the whole. In such guise may Domett have 
parted with his comrades, after a last "Colloquial" dinner, 
late in the April of 1842, bound for New Zealand, whither 
his cousin William Young had already preceded him. 

It is as certain that Domett inspired Browning's Waring 
as that he is not to be identified with the hero of that poem. 
We have Browning's own word for it. " Waring came back 
the other day," he wrote to Miss Blagden in 1872, "after 
thirty years' absence, the same as ever, — nearly." ^ Domett 
himself did not disclaim the likeness, while pointing out that 
most of the setting was imaginary. Arnould wrote to New 
Zealand that the poem " delighted us all very much, for we 
recognized in it a fancy portrait of a very dear friend." Fact 
and fancy, indeed, are freely mingled. The secrecy of 
Waring's departure, for example, had no counterpart in 
reality, nor was the time "the snowiest in all December." 
But the beautiful and touching lines which attest the poet's 
devotion to his friend are but a poetical version of what he 
expressed with equal directness in his letters. 

" Meantime, how much I loved him, 
I find out now I've lost him. 
I who cared not if I moved him, 
Who could so carelessly accost him, 
Henceforth never shall get free 
Of his ghostly company." 

' Mrs. Orr, Lift^ p. 293. 



8'6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Of how many hearts is not that the cry ! There is no more 
human touch in Browning's poetry. 

His letters to the exiled Domett were numerous, as we 
have seen, during several years. With the poet's marriage, 
however, they ceased. But his friend was not forgotten. 
Messages were sent to him repeatedly through Arnould, and 
there were more direct assurances. There is certainly some- 
thing of Waring in the " friend, over the sea " of Time's 
Revenges (1845). Three years later Browning's visit to Fano 
with his wife inspired The Guardian Angel, with its explicit 
references to Domett, and its note of wistful inquiry : — 

" My love is here. Where are you, dear old friend ? 
How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end ? " 

The colonist, meanwhile, was hewing out his career, "sub- 
duing," like Clough's hero, "the earth and his spirit." He 
was to return at last, and pick up the threads of the old 
friendship ; but the Wairoa was to roll its waters seaward for 
four-and-twenty years, ere that should happen. 



CHAPTER VI 
"SORDELLO" 

"Sordello's story "—Publication long delayed— Sordello in Dante — His 
name preserved at Mantua — Aliprandi's poem in his honour — " Another 
Richmond in the field " — Browning's poem consequently modified — The 
historical element accentuated — Browning's first Italian journey — He 
invests Sordello with a passion for humanity — Reason for this — His 
father's sketch of Sordello's life — Points of resemblance— Extent of the 
fictitious element in the poem. 

IN tracing the growth of Browning's friendship with 
Domett incidental mention has been made of the 
publication of Sordello. 

Since the days when its author wrote "Who wills may 
hear Sordello's story told " so much has been written in aid 
of those whom this poem has perplexed that no reader need 
now lose his way in the maze of a confessedly difficult work : 
but, strange to say, the story of the evolution of the poem 
itself, and of the circumstances attending its production, still 
remains not only untold but almost unattempted. Yet none 
of Browning's poems has a more interesting history. 

The Sordello of 1840 has its roots in the Pauline of 1833. 
There can be little doubt, indeed, that it was not only con- 
ceived but actually begun before the rapidly-written Paracelsus 
was undertaken ; nor can there be much doubt that the intro- 
duction into the latter work of the imaginary poet-lover, Aprile, 
was due to an already existing interest in the real Italian 
poet-lover, Sordello. In April, 1835, in writing to Fox about 
the publication of Paracelsus^ Browning remarked, " I have 
another affair on hand rather of a more popular nature, I 
conceive ; but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two, 
so I decide on trying the question with this." This is the 



90 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

first known allusion to Sordello, the possibly " popular " 
character of which will presently appear. Almost exactly a 
year later, when asked by Macready to write him a tragedy, 
Browning, in spite of his eagerness to respond to the invita- 
tion, was so occupied with his poem that two months elapsed 
before he could even decide upon a subject. " I was engaged 
on other work," he explained in 1888, "whence the delay in 
determining on a subject fit for Macready"; while in a 
discarded preface to Strafford, the play produced in May, 
1837, he wrote, "I had for some time been engaged in a 
poem of a very different nature when induced \i.e. in the 
previous May, 1836] to make the present attempt " ; and that 
his labours had been severe is evident from the fact that he 
added that he was not without apprehension lest his "eager- 
ness to freshen a jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy 
natures of a grand epoch may have operated unfavourably on 
the represented play." Three months later Sordello was 
spoken of as *' announced " ; and in August, probably on the 
first of that month, Browning could write to his friend Miss 
Haworth that he was about to begin finishing it. Eight 
months elapsed, but in April, 1838, this purpose was still 
unaccomplished when Browning started for Italy, hoping to 
complete the work "among the scenes it describes." On 
31 July, just after his return, the end once more seemed near 
— *' You will see Sordello in a trice, if the fagging fit holds," 
he wrote : and yet the poem was not published for nineteen 
months, that is, for more than two years and a half after the 
first mention of its anticipated completion. 

The subject of Sordello is remote and apparently unattrac- 
tive ; yet Browning's choice of it arose, like everything else 
in his life, in the most natural way. In 1828, at the age of 
sixteen, twelve years before the appearance of the poem, 
Browning was entered among the students of Italian at 
London University, Gower Street ; but since Angelo Cerutti 
was available for private lessons at Camberwell, Italian was 
replaced upon the college books by German. To study 
Italian was to study Dante ; and as Browning read the 
Divina Commedia with Angelo Cerutti, and became familiar 
with the striking description of the meeting of Virgil and 
Sordello upon the lower slopes of the Hill of Virtue, Dante's 



"SORDELLO" TO REPLACE "PAULINE" 91 

picture suggested to him the idea of a poem which should set 
forth the spiritual awakening of a poetic nature, such as he 
had attempted in PaJiline, and in regard to which John Stuart 
Mill had declared that he had failed. This poem had been 
anonymous : not a copy had been sold : it was practically 
non-existent. Sordello was intended to replace Pmdine. 
Information upon the subject of the projected work was not 
far to seek. The praise accorded by Coleridge in his lectures 
of 1818 to Cary's translation of Dante had at once led to the 
disposal of one edition of this work and to the speedy issue 
of another, so that the book was in the hands of all English 
students of the Florentine. In a lengthy note on Ptirgatorio 
VI. Cary referred his readers to some of the leading authori- 
ties upon the " fabulous narrative " which had grown up 
around the name of the once famous Sordello. These and 
other works connected with Troubadour literature Browning 
consulted in the old reading-room of the British Museum. 

Mantua boasts of two poetic names — Virgil and Sordello. 
The name of Virgil — " degli altri Poeti onore e lume " — is a 
household word ; that of Sordello is, comparatively speaking, 
unknown, and his thirty-four poems unheard of. And yet, 
when one crosses the lagoon which washes the walls of 
Mantua and, after threading its quiet streets, enters the 
central piazza, one finds that this spot — once the city forum 
and now overlooked by Duomo, mediaeval Castello and 
ducal Palazzo — bears not the name of Virgil, but that of the 
almost unknown Sordello. Aliprandi, the earliest of Mantuan 
chroniclers, may explain this anomaly. Hundreds of years 
before Browning was born, Aliprandi had composed three 
thousand lines of fersa rima to celebrate the exploits of the 
" famous Sordello," the poet hero of Mantua. 

" Wise, bold and valiant man was he, 
A better warrior ne'er was seen, 
Of stature huge, a heart of fire, 
A man all grace, of splendid mien." 

Sordello, said Aliprandi — probably in the very piazza which 
now bears his name — fought and overcame Leonello, one of 
the doughtiest knights of the thirteenth century. Cunizza, 
the sister of Ezzelin the Tyrant, became so enamoured of him 



92 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

that she disguised herself as a man to win her way to him 
and gain his love. The French king, hearing of his renown, 
invited him to France, where Sordello still further advanced 
his reputation for gallantry and valour. On his return, 
people flocked from far and near to welcome him, and to the 
sound of the trumpet proclaimed him the greatest warrior of 
his age. Mantua honoured him with an eight days' feast, 
and he became her Prince, defender and saviour. Such are 
the legends which the historian Platina, best known for his 
History of the Popes, afterwards embodied in sober Latin prose, 
and it is to such legends that Browning refers when he 
declares that 

" The Chroniclers of Mantua tired their pen 
Telling how Sordello Prince Visconti saved 
Mantua, and elsewhere notably behaved. 



As knight, bard, gallant, men were never dumb 
In praise of him." 

Nor was the renown of this poet-hero confined to Mantua 
and the Middle Ages. In 1844, when Browning landed at 
Naples, among the first sights that met his view were adver- 
tisements of the performance of an opera on Sordello ; and 
to-day, in the windows of Italian bookshops, one may see 
paper-covered volumes on the legend of Sordello and of the 
Ezzelini family who figure so prominently in Browning's 
poem. Even in England Browning was not the only writer 
who had found interest in these legends. A Mrs. W. Busk 
had turned to them, and having been filled with regret that a 
poet once so celebrated should have become forgotten, she 
also determined "to sketch his adventures, fictitious or real." 
Accordingly, in the summer of 1837, just when Browning was 
talking of finishing his poem, there appeared two volumes of 
Plays and Poems with regard to which the Athenczum of 
22 July, 1837, wrote: "the authoress's fugitive poems are 
collected and headed by a longer poem Sordello. Is this 
founded upon the same subject as that chosen by the author 
of Paracelsus, for his announced poem ? " 

The work of Mrs. Busk demands attention for two 
reasons. First, it reveals the popular (one might almost 
say the normal) treatment of the Sordello legend, which 



MRS. BUSK'S VERSION 93 

Browning deliberately rejected ; and, further, its appearance 
in 1837 without doubt supplies a reason for some of the most 
peculiar features of Browning's poem of 1840. Mrs. Busk 
was a disciple of Scott, and her Sordello, consisting of some 
2000 lines of rhymed tetrameter, is, like that of Browning, 
divided into the six cantos which Scott had made fashionable. 
In the Chronicle of Aliprando Sordello maybe said to appear 
as the poet-warrior ; in the work of Mrs, Busk, of which the 
following is a brief summary, he is essentially the poet-lover : — 

" Sordello, a famous warrior and poet had sung many a martial 
lay, but love had hitherto been to him a subject for scorn. Suddenly 
summoned to Verona by his native lord, Ezzelin the Tyrant, he 
speedily assumes a first place as courtier, warrior, and counsellor : 
here, too, he sees Cunizza, the sister of Ezzelin, and forgetting his 
cold disdain he at once loves and pines. Declaring his love, he is 
at first rejected, but ultimately accepted. Ezzelin, however, being 
desirous of marrying his sister to Count Richard of St. Boniface, 
plots with his brother Alberic to send Sordello to the wars, and 
Cunizza is forced to wed Count Richard. Sordello, hearing this amid 
his victories, renounces war and wanders far and wide as a minstrel, 
till Ezzelin is driven to seek his aid in withdrawing Cunizza from the 
court of his brother-in-law, with whom he has quarrelled. Sordello, 
as a Troubadour, visits Count Richard, and Cunizza, disguised as a 
page, flies with him from her husband. Thereupon the Count is 
attacked and slain, and the poem closes with the marriage of 
Sordello and Cunizza." 

" There were many singular incidents attending my work," 
wrote Browning some years later to Miss Barrett, and surely 
the most singular was the unexpected appearance in the 
summer of 1837 of this poem, Strafford had just been acted, 
and the Edinburgh Review of July had gone out of its way 
to devote twenty pages to that drama ; his own Sordello was 
nearing completion, and Browning, who was full of ambition, 
must have been eager to retain and increase his hold upon 
the public, when he found himself thus suddenly forestalled. 
Two courses were open to him. He might wholly discard 
his work, exactly as at that very time he was discarding the 
" splendid subject " he had chosen for a tragedy, because 
Richard Hengist Home was publishing a play upon the 
same theme : or he might so modify his poem that it should 



94 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

differ radically from the received Sordello tradition. The 
latter was the course adopted. During the autumn and 
winter of 1837 the poem was probably laid aside, for Brown- 
ing was engrossed in theatrical matters. When he returned 
to it, it would seem to have occurred to him that one means 
of differentiating his work from that of others would be 
to accentuate the historical element. 

Several circumstances inclined him to adopt this plan. 
Thus there was the fact, already noticed, that he had strong 
historical leanings, which had been amply encouraged by his 
father. In Paracelsus, indeed, he had made no serious attempt 
to create an historical background. But six months after its 
appearance history laid claim upon his thoughts by reason of 
his interest in Forster's Life of Strafford — an interest which 
presently suggested to him the subject of his own first acted 
drama. Nor was the impulse exhausted by the completion of 
his Strafford, for within two months he was meditating another 
historical play, King Victor and King Charles. Again, the 
appearance, in 1837, of Carlyle's French Revolution was some- 
thing of a revelation to those occupied in the study of history, 
discovering as it did the value of elaborate detail and of 
acquaintance with locality : a fact not without significance, in 
view of Browning's known admiration of Carlyle. It is true, 
indeed, that in 1863 he wrote of Sordello that his "stress lay 
on the incidents in the development of a soul," and declared 
that the " historical decoration was purposely of no more im- 
portance than a background requires " ; yet the evidence is 
conclusive that in the early months of 183S this historical 
background had become, for the time at least, of absorbing 
interest. Browning had been studying the three volumes of 
G. B. Verci's Storia degli Ecelini — a scholarly work wholly 
overlooked by students of the poet — from which he borrowed 
most of those recondite historical details which have added to 
the confusion of his readers ; and inspired by this work he 
sailed for North Italy, intending, as has been said, to finish 
his poem " among the scenes it describes." 

Leaving St. Katharine's docks in the afternoon of Good 

Friday, 13 April, 1838, he arrived nearly seven weeks later at 

Trieste, whence he at once proceeded to Venice.^ His visit 

> This was Browning's first Italian visit ; he did not, as has been repeatedly 



HIS FIRST ITALIAN JOURNEY 95 

in Italy lasted but a month, yet so fascinating did the island 
city prove that, although it had no direct connection with the 
purpose of his journey, he lingered there for more than a 
fortnight. 

On leaving Venice he passed through Treviso, where he saw 
the Titian to which he refers in Pippa Passes, and then walked 
westward across the plain through Giorgione's Castelfranco 
to the prettily situated Bassano, with its river, its quaint 
wooden bridge, its castle and its memories of the Ezzeh'ni 
family. The neighbouring " delicious Asolo " which he bad 
found mentioned in Verci, next became his headquarters for 
four days ; and thence he rambled northward to Possagno, the 
birthplace of Canova, and westward to Romano, the ancestral 
home of the Ezzelini family, which Dante had long since 
made familiar to him. Here, standing beside the church 
tower which now rises on the site of the huge quadrangular 
fortress of olden days, he looked southward across the valley 
to San Zenone degli Ezzelini, the last stronghold of the 
hated family. Fifty years later, in 1889, during his third visit 
to Asolo, just before his death, this tragic spot still retained 
its fascination for him, and from the loggia of his friend and 
hostess he would watch the sun sinking behind San Zenone's 
tower-crowned hill-top, and would relate the doom of Alberic, 
brother of the tyrant Ezzelin, who there 

" Saw his exasperated captors burn 
Seven children and their mother, then, regaled 
So far, tied on to a wild horse, was trailed 
To death through raunce and bramble-bush." ^ 

stated, visit Italy in 1834, He sailed at 4 p.m., in the Norham Castle, Captain 
Matthew Davidson. Owing to gales and snow, a week elapsed before they reached 
Start Point, Devon. On 26 April he was off Lisbon ; on the 27th Cape St. 
Vincent was sixteen miles to the north-west [cf. Home Thoughts from the Sea\', on 
Sunday, the 29th, he passed the Straits of Gibraltar, and entered "burning heat." 
At 5 a.m. on the following Sunday, 6 May, the capsized smuggler, so graphically 
described in the letter to Miss Haworth, printed by Mrs. Orr \_Life, pp. 96-100], 
was sighted off the coast of Algiers in lat. 37° 3' N., long. 33^ 9' E. Next Sunday, 
13 May, he was seven miles from Valetta : on Monday, close to Syracuse, and 
during a calm on 16 May Mount Etna was in sight all day [cf Sordello, book iii. 
11. 951-960], Another fourteen days passed before he reached Trieste, on 
30 May, at 4 p.m. ; he left the next evening by steamer for Venice, where he 
arrived at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, i June. While coasting along North Africa he 
wrote How they Brought the Good News from Ghent, 
* Sordello^ book v'i,,ad fin, 



96 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Moving again to Bassano he walked northward along the 
Brenta to the convent at Oliero to which Ezzelin the Monk 
retired, and crossed the stream to visit his reputed grave at 
Solagno. From these little-known spots he passed to Vicenza 
and Padua, whence he returned (26 June) to Venice. He 
journeyed homeward by way of Verona, the Tyrol, and the 
Rhine. 

Such are the spots — "all my places and castles" as he 
termed them — to see which Browning made a special visit to 
Italy ; and yet not one of these places except Verona has 
anything whatever to do with Sordello or with the develop- 
ment of his soul ; they have everything to do with the 
historical background, with Verci and his History of the 
Ecelini Family. 

Nor is this all. Venice, though unconnected with the 
subject of his poem except for a few and quite unimportant 
details, laid such a spell upon Browning that the fortnight he 
spent there was destined to lead to a revolution in his work. 
The main purpose of Sordello was, as has been said, to trace 
the development of a human soul, and the first half of the 
poem is almost wholly devoted to the story, elaborately 
psychological in character, of the spiritual and mental growth 
of the Mantuan poet. Dante, from whom Browning had 
received the first stimulus for his work, and whose influence 
upon it is manifest from beginning to end, had represented 
Sordello as a lonely spirit standing aloof from the other 
shades upon the mountain slopes of the Ante-Purgatorio, 
because, explains Benvenuto da Imola, the earliest of Dante 
commentators, Sordello loved solitude. Mrs. Busk retained 
this conception : — 

" The empty praises of the crowd 
Shunning, he oft in museful mood, 
Sought the recesses of the wood. 

'Twas there Sordello loved to stray 
And sometimes dream a sultry day 
In balmy listlessness away." 

Browning represented Sordello not only as thus spending a 
brief period, but as passing almost the whole of his life in 
the isolation of Goito, his reputed birthplace : — 




O < i 

:; o u 

9 K -^ 

o? % 

o w o 



THE LOVE ELEMENT IN "SORDELLO" 97 

" beyond the glades 
Of the fir-forest border, and the rim 
Of the low range of mountains, was for him 
No other world : but this appeared his own 
To wander through at pleasure and alone." 

But Dante not only described Sordello as a solitary figure, he 
placed him among the spirits of those who had died violent 
deaths and had delayed repentance to the last. Yet Dante 
gave no hint as to how Sordello had sinned. Tradition, how- 
ever, depicted him as a lover of the type of Launcelot and 
Tristram ; and Cunizza, his beloved, as being as passionate 
and guilty as Guinevere or Iseult. Mrs. Busk had made the 
advent of love the means of effecting a sudden transformation 
in her Sordello ; yet in deference to contemporary opinion 
she had purified the old story by putting Sordello's union 
with Cunizza after and not before the death of her 
husband. Similarly, Browning, bearing in mind that Dante 
had placed the five-times-married Cunizza not in the Inferno 
but in the " swooning sphere " of the Paradiso, represented 
his heroine ^ as being simply betrothed, and betrothed 
unwillingly, to Count Richard of St. Boniface, when, in order 
to save herself from marriage, she sends for Sordello and, 
suddenly confessing her love, invites him to fly with her to 
Ferrara. Yet the love element in the poem of 1840, it must 
be confessed, is disappointingly vague and subordinate ; but 
had it appeared in the summer of 1837 there seems to be no 
doubt that Sordello might have been fairly described in the 
words of Tennyson with regard to Maud as " the history of a 
morbid poetic soul . . . raised to sanity by a pure and holy 
love which elevates his whole nature." How the change came 
about Browning himself has related in one of the least-under- 
stood portions of his poem. 

Before leaving for Italy in April, 1838, he had conceived 

* Palma is Browning's name, as he explains, for the one 

•' Dante spoke with in the clear 
Amorous silence of the swooning sphere — 
Cunizza., as he called her." . . . 

It was really the name of a half-sister of Cunizza. Sordello., Book V., ad fin. 
u 



98 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

of Palma as just such a woman as might fire the heart of 
Sordello— fair-haired, blue-eyed, a vision of beauty :— 

" How the tresses curled 
Into a sumptuous swell of gold, and waved 
About her like a glory ! even the ground 
Was bright, as with spilt sunbeams." 

But, six days after his arrival in Venice, when he mingled 
with the crowds that thronged the vast Piazza of San Marco 
during the festival of Corpus Christi, or as he sat upon some 
"ruined palace-step" quietly watching the simple peasant 
girls in their gondolas bearing fruit and flowers to market, he 
realized afresh what he had learned " years ago " and " leagues 
at distance " when, as a boy at Camberwell, he had been 
thrilled by the verse of Shelley— that it was not needful for 
Humanity to be " dizened out as chiefs and bards " to form 
a fit theme for the poet ; and the outcome of these musings 
was seen in the fact that queen-like Palma 

" Whose early foot was set 
Forth as she'd plant it on a pedestal, 
Now, i' the silent city, seems to fall." 

For thus wrote Browning in describing how the idea flashed 
upon him of modifying the received Sordello legend, by 
superseding the passion for a beautiful high-born woman by 
that love for the "warped souls and bodies" of suffering 
Humanity which he decided to represent as being developed 
in the mediaeval poet.^ 

That he underestimated the labour which the introduction 
of this new motive would involve is evident from the long 
interval which was still to precede the completion of the 
poem. The work, indeed, had to be thoroughly recast ; and 
that the possibility of a Sordello of a vastly different character 
was contemplated by at least one member of the Camberwell 
household is somewhat amusingly illustrated by one of the 
curiosities of Browning literature, in the form of a rough draft 
in the handwriting of the poet's father, who, among his other 
gifts, was somewhat of a novelist. Of this the following is a 
brief summary : — 

' Sordello^ Book III,, towards the close. 



HIS FATHER'S VERSION 99 

" Sordello, nephew of Ezzelin the Tyrant, is invited by his 
uncle ^ to his court at Vicenza ; but on account of a feud between 
the two branches of the family, he is advised not to go. He there- 
fore flees to France, where he becomes a Troubadour. Returning 
to Italy, he seeks the court of his uncle, to whom he is personally 
unknown — for Sordello had been carried away as an infant ^ and 
educated at Pisa — and he enters the household as tutor to Alfonzo 
and Bertha, two prisoners, children of Count Julian of Visconti 
whom Ezzelin had murdered. Discovering that Ezzelin desires to 
wed Bertha, Sordello, who loves her, proposes flight, whereupon 
Ezzelin at once orders the arrest of the poet. The lovers, however, 
escape to Genoa and embark for Alexandria ; but off the coast of 
Sicily they are captured by pirates, taken to Algiers, purchased by 
the wealthy Mustapha and carried to his estate. Ezzehn, in pursuit, 
reaches Genoa ; here, his life being in danger, he vows to visit the 
Holy Land. On his recovery he sets out, but off Crete he also 
is captured by the corsairs, borne to Algiers, and purchased by 
Mustapha. Finding that Sordello, who had risen in favour, is about 
to wed Bertha, Ezzelin makes himself known and claims his bride ; 
Mustapha decides that she shall be given to the one who shall turn 
Mohammedan. This Sordello indignantly refuses, but Ezzelin accepts ; 
and the marriage is arranged for the following day. 

" Meanwhile, Alfonzo having escaped from Vicenza by means of 
a pirate with whom he was acquainted, accidentally lands at Tunis, 
and hearing of the proposed marriage of his sister seeks the aid of 
his pirate friend in rescuing her. By the help of a slave he 
gains access to the garden of Mustapha, slays Ezzelin and retires. 
Mustapha, on discovering the deed, accuses Sordello and has him 
strangled with a bow-string; whereupon the slave, falling at his 
master's feet, declares how the murder had been committed. In 
order to make all possible amends Mustapha offers Bertha his hand ! 
This she reluctantly accepts, and the poem concludes with a descrip- 
tion of the magnificent wedding." 

Dominie Sampson's " Prodigious ! " may seem to anyone 

* Cf. Rolandino, De faetis in Marchia Tarvisana, Eook V. ch. 3. The 
expression "de ipsius familia," there given, is sometimes accepted as referring to 
the household of Count Richard of St. Boniface. Both Browning and his father 
take it as referring to Ezzelin : Browning, understanding by " familia " the 
household oi 'EiztYm, makes Sordello a page ; his father, taking "familia" in the 
sense of family, makes Sordello a nephew. 

* This detail, which appears in an altered form in Browning's poem, is found 
in none of the old accounts. 



Foo THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

familiar with Browning's poem the only word adequate for 
this fantastic sketch ; and yet a little reflection shows that in 
spite of the remarkable changes he has effected, Browning's 
father has most ingeniously contrived to retain the essential 
motives of the original story, and moreover — and this is the 
remarkable fact — has introduced certain wholly new elements 
which are to be found nowhere except in his son's poem. 
For example, Sordello still remains the traditional poet-lover, 
but the lady of his love is as yet unmarried, and the purpose 
of her flight is to escape from a union with one to whom she 
is betrothed and betrothed unwillingly — modifications which 
are only to be found in the poem of the son. Then, Sordello 
is represented as having been stolen away in infancy and as 
being unrecognized by his family on his return. These concep- 
tions, common enough in romances from the days oi Amadis 
downward, are wholly unknown to the Sordello legend except 
in this sketch and in Browning's poem. Again, the refusal of 
Sordello to accept the hand of Bertha at the price of his 
religious faith, creates a situation involving a struggle between 
love and duty exactly comparable to that which closes the 
poem of 1840 ; while the subsequent violent death of Sordello 
under the bow-string is an ingenious adaptation of Dante's 
words with regard to the group of which Sordello was a member 
— "we all by violence died" — which Browning, under the 
influence of Shelley, preferred to interpret by causing Sordello 
to " evaporate " under the violence of his conflicting emotions. 
One important consideration remains. This fantasie 
really departs, in many respects, no further from the recognized 
Sordello legend than the poem of Browning, which in spite of 
its wealth of historial detail is as much of a fiction as Marmion 
or The Lady of the Lake. The main action of Browning's 
poem is assigned to the year 1224, soon after the death at 
Goito of Adelaide of Tuscany, a reputed dealer in the black 
arts of whom various legends are related. In the father's 
sketch, her son, Ezzelin the Tyrant, at least retains his 
traditional role, that of the villain of the piece, assigned to 
him from the time of Benvenuto da Imola. Browning, how- 
ever, has displaced the son by the mother, whom he supposes 
to confess upon her death-bed that thirty years before she 
had stolen from Vicenza and hidden at Goito the infant 



A SPIRITUAL CONFLICT loi 

child of her husband's dearest friend and henchman, the 
splendid warrior Salinguerra, on account of her jealous fear 
that the son of so distinguished a father should eventually 
prove the rival of her own child. This event, upon which 
the whole of Browning's poem turns, and upon which he has 
built a whole series of imaginary crises, has, however, no 
foundation in fact. Upon hearing the avowal of Adelaide, 
her husband at once resigns his worldly power and retires to 
the lonely convent at Oliero, to be known henceforth as 
Ezzelin the Monk. This creates a second crisis, for Salin- 
guerra, receiving the news of this withdrawal just as he is 
about to sail with the Emperor Frederick II. to the Crusades, 
at once hastens northward from Naples. His return to his 
native Ferrara brings about a crisis in the affairs of that city, 
where he is promptly attacked by his foes, among whom is 
Count Richard of St. Boniface, to whom Palma has just been 
betrothed by her wily father, Ezzelin the Monk, in order to 
patch up peace between the rival Guelphs and Ghibellines. 
This warfare produces, in turn, a crisis in the life of Count 
Richard, who is taken prisoner by Salinguerra as described at 
the beginning of Browning's poem. This, again, produces a 
crisis in the life of Palma, who, having learnt the secret of 
the birth of Sordello, whom she loves, sends for him to 
Verona, and confessing her love hastens with him to Ferrara 
in order to make the great revelation to Salinguerra. The 
making known of Sordello to his father, who for thirty years 
has thought him dead, gives rise to one of the most dramatic 
scenes in the poem, and brings about the catastrophe, in 
which Sordello, discovering himself to be the son of the 
greatest warrior of the day, and possessor, if he please, of 
the hand of the beauteous Palma and of the lordship of 
Northern Italy, dies broken-hearted, in the conflict between 
ambition and love, on the one hand, and the claims of the 
"warped bodies and souls" of suffering Humanity, on the 
other. 

Now, except that Browning was dealing with real people 
and places, and — somewhat freely — with historical events, this 
story is as fictitious as that of Aladdin. That the castle of 
Goito, to take but one example, was built for Adelaide of 
Tuscany, and was ever her resort or that of the lovely Palma, 



102 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

is as mythical as the existence of the Goito described in the 
poem, for that castle with its maple-panelled room, its 
arabesques, its palm-like pillars, its vault and beautiful font, 
belongs to the realm of the vision of Kubla Khan : while the 
surrounding scenery with its "few low mountains," the fir 
trees and larches, the maples, oaks, ilexes, and myrtles, had 
their origin in Virgil, who first created in his Pastorals ideal 
scenery for the "smooth sliding Mincio, crown'd with vocal 
reeds," upon the banks of which Goito stands. But Goito, 
at least, is traditionally connected with Sordello as his birth- 
place: just as Ferrara is historically connected with Salin- 
guerra. Between Sordello and Salinguerra, however, there 
is no link at all, except the golden one forged by the imagi- 
nation of Browning. The real Sordello, also, was quite 
unconnected with Ferrara : he did not die there, nor did he 
die at the age of thirty : he is said to have lived to nearly 
three times that age. 

The introduction of this Salinguerra element was evidently 
not present to the mind of Browning when he went to Italy 
in 1838, for among all his "places and castles" Ferrara, it 
seems, was unvisited : yet in 1840 it had become the scene 
of half his poem. Its introduction was obviously due to the 
Vision of Humanity which had come to him in Venice, for, 
on his return, he discovered how he could combine Dante's 
description of Sordello with what had come to him through 
Shelley. Dante, after describing the welcome accorded by 
Sordello to his fellow- Man tuan, Virgil, immediately proceeds 
to contrast with it the bitter civil strife which in his own day 
was tearing Italy asunder. 

" This gentle spirit, 
Even from the pleasant sound of this dear land 
Was prompt to greet a fellow-citizen 
With such glad cheer ; while now thy loving ones 
In thee abide not without war ; and one 
Malicious gnaws another : ay of those 
Whom the same wall and the same moat contains." * 

Now in the Parva Chronica Ferrariensis, which Browning 
had consulted at the British Museum, he had read of the 

' Purgatorio, Canto vi. 79-85. 



HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT 103 

horrors of civil strife at Ferrara, and this strife, he had learnt, 
was most fierce in the days of Salinguerra. He saw that he 
could associate the sudden awakening of the self-centred 
Sordello to the claims of Humanity with the sight of the 
horrors of the besieged city. He had read of thirty-two 
towers within the city walls being laid low, and of forty years 
of discord, during which one or other of the rival factions was 
driven out ten times, and on each occasion the homes of the 
vanquished were laid waste. Hence sprang that description, 
Dantesque in its intensity, of the horrors of the siege with 
which his fourth book opens. 

The influence of Dante upon Browning's poem is, as 
has been said, traceable from beginning to end. Some 
years later, indeed, he distinctly applied to his own creation 
the description of the final repentance of Sordello in 
the Purgatorio. He had been re-reading this portion of 
Dante, and thereupon wrote to Miss Barrett — "the first 
speech of the group of which Sordello makes one, struck me 
with a new significance as well describing the man and his 
purpose and fate in my own poem." He therefore translated 
the passage " off hand " : — 

" And sinners were we to the extreme hour : 
Then light from heaven fell, making us aware. 
So that, repenting us and pardoned, out 
Of life we passed to God, at peace with Him 
Who fills the heart with yearning Him to see." 

"Which," remarked Browning, "is just my Sordello's story." 



CHAPTER VII 
BROWNING AND THE DRAMA 

State of the English Stage in the thirties — Lack of good dramatists — 
Macready welcomes a recruit in Browning — Production of Strafford — 
Browning a habitud of Covent Garden during Macready's management — 
Offers him King Victor and King Charles and The Return of the Druses 
— Macready accepts A Blot in the ^Scutcheon, but keeps it by him unacted 
— Dickens's praise of the play — Arnould's account of its production — 
Macready declines his part — Browning's indignation — Breach between 
the friends — Colombe's Birthday offered to Charles Kean — Browning 
abandons writing for the stage. 

THE story of Browning's active connection with the 
stage is a story of seven or eight years of his life, 
the beginning of which takes us back to a period 
four years before the publication of Sordello, when, in 
February, 1836, he proposed to Macready a tragedy on 
Narses, the victorious general of Justinian.^ Macready forth- 
with wrote in his diary, " It would indeed be some recom- 
pense for the miseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening 
disgusts which I have endured in my profession, if by its 
exercise I had awakened a spirit of poetry whose influence 
would elevate, ennoble and adorn our degraded drama. May 
it be ! " 2 For the English stage was at this date, in the words 
of a contemporary critic, " a byword of contempt." This cry 
was not wholly new, for nearly thirty years had elapsed since 
Byron wrote — 

" Now to the Drama turn— oh ! motley sight, 
What precious scenes the wandering eyes invite." 

• " A passing fancy : one difticulty in the subject was insuperable, I soon saw. 
lAW^.f by R. B. to Mr. William Arclur, June, 1888.] 

• Macready's Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries and Letters, vol. ii. 
p. 8. 



DEGRADATION OF THE DRAMA 105 

But Byron did not live to see the days when Covent 
Garden, " the home of the Kembles," the play-house built and 
managed by the brother of Sarah Siddons, had passed 
beneath the sway of Mr. Osbaldiston, late of the Surrey 
Theatre. 

Drury Lane and Covent Garden were still the two 
National theatres, which, together with the Hay market, had 
an exclusive monopoly of the representation of the " regular " 
drama ; yet the managers of these theatres in their, often 
vain, endeavours to avoid bankruptcy were pandering to the 
public taste for melodrama, spectacular displays, or even 
circus performances and wild-beast shows. In the year of 
Paracelsus, Byron might have seen upon the stage of John 
Philip Kemble a coach and six horses, and a highwayman 
who was advertised to take the leap upon a Blood Steed, " as 
described so beautifully in the celebrated novel by E. L. 
Bulwer, Esq., M.P." In 1836, instead of the Lady Macbeth 
of Mrs. Siddons, he might have beheld pretty Miss Vincent 
from the Surrey Theatre — soon to be acting Queen Henrietta 
in Browning's Strafford, — as Thalaba the Destroyer, in a 
Burmese chariot, drawn by Burmese bulls, and followed by 
elephants, ostriches, and other zoological accompaniments 
from the Surrey Gardens. One of the chief attractions of 
Covent Garden in this same year was 

*' the Splendid Pageantry, Grotesque, Unique Effects and the Total 
Novelty of the Magnificent, Serio-Comic, Musical, Grand Easter 
Romance and Extravaganza, Za-Ze-Zi-Zo-Zu^ or Dominoes ! Chess ! ! 
and Cards ! ! ! " ^ 

These adaptations of Paul Clifford, of Southey's poem 
and of a French burlesque were three of the many works of 
Mr. Edward Fitzball, also late of the Surrey Theatre, now 
specially retained as salaried dramatist by Osbaldiston of 
Covent Garden, and installed in an apartment in the Theatre. 
Mr. Fitzball's views upon the dignity of the drama have been 

' " A city built of dominoes, another of cards, and a railway, then not only 
new to the stage, but to the world. A game of dominoes was played by the 
characters as dominoes in a most remarkable way" ; it made "a remarkable hit : 
nearly all the aristocracy came to sec it." [Fitzball's Thirty-five Years of a 
Dramatic Author's Life, 1859, vol. ii, p. 46.] 



io6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

preserved. "Everything dramatic," said he, "that is moral, 
interesting, and amusing to the public, is the legitimate drama, 
whether it be illuminated with blue fire, or in one act or in 
twenty." ^ It was a blue-fire drama by this writer that cut 
short the brief career of Browning's first play : and when the 
poet's name first appeared upon a play-bill it was to 
announce that his tragedy was to be acted " for the last time 
this season," for the benefit of Mr. Edward Fitzball.'^ 

But these attractions of Covent Garden were far surpassed 
by the " peculiar novelties " of Drury Lane under the " poet " 
manager Alfred Bunn, with whom Macready had that memor- 
able quarrel in April, 1836, by reason of which he suddenly 
became a popular favourite and the champion of the legiti- 
mate drama. It was Bunn who introduced into his Charle- 
magne the circus-rider Ducrow with his "double stud of 
highly trained Palfreys," together with Mr. Van Amburgh 
and his celebrated lions. Six times within as many weeks 
did the youthful Queen Victoria visit the lions. This was in 
1838, when Macready, who had succeeded Osbaldiston as 
manager of Covent Garden, was struggling to restore and 
uphold the dignity of the drama. His stage-manager thus 
records the result : — " we were all sick at Covent Garden, — 
men, women and children. We saw the drama dead, starva- 
tion staring us in the face, while over the way at Drury Lane, 
Bunn and his lions were fat and flourishing." Macready's 
regular drama was producing ^200, often, indeed, less than 
;^ioo a night ; Bunn and the lions realized, on the occasion 
of the royal visit of January, 1839, over £700. 

So fallen was the drama in 1836 that the appearance of 
the last three volumes of the now-forgotten Plays of Joanna 
Baillie was gravely compared to the advent of a new comet ! 
In January the Athenceurn longed to see them acted : in 
March, after two of them had been performed, it ruefully 
confessed that " they are for the closet and not for the stage." 
Sheridan Knowles " alone can write stage plays," remarked 
Blackwood, and Knowles, actor, schoolmaster, dramatist, and 

' Fitzball's Thirty-five Years of a Dramatic Author's Life, 1859, voL ii. p. 107 
* Fitzball is, perhaps, best remembered by his song " My Pretty Jane," made 

popular by the rendering of Sims Reeves. He also wrote, for his friend Michael 

Balfc, the libretto of Marilana. 



MACREADY'S INVITATION 107 

ultimately Baptist minister, had remained since his Virginius 
of 1820 what Hazlitt had termed him — " the first tragic 
writer of his time." Yet Knowles was not quite alone. 
The other generally recognized dramatists of 1836 were 
Mr. Jerrold, Mr. Planch^, Mr. Peeke, Mr. Buckstone, and 
Mr. Fitzball — " there are a few others," added the compiler 
of this list of celebrities, with unconscious humour, " but their 
productions are of so inferior a character that we may well 
be excused for forgetting their names." Paracelsus seemed 
to herald a change. In March, 1836, there appeared in the 
New Monthly Magazine an article by John Forster, headed 
" Evidences of a new genius for Dramatic Poetry," which 
boldly proclaimed that "Mr. Browning has the powers of 
a great dramatic poet," and that his genius " waits only the 
proper opportunity to redeem the drama and elevate the 
literary repute of England." 

Such an opportunity was offered to Browning by Macready 
on the evening of 26 May, 1836, after the first representation 
of Talfourd's classical drama Ion. It was Macready's first 
benefit night at Covent Garden — he had just quitted Drury 
Lane, where he had acted for thirteen years, on account 
of his quarrel with Bunn — and the theatre was crowded 
from floor to ceiling. In one box sat Wordsworth, heartily 
applauding, and beside him was Landor, recently returned 
from Italy : Miss Mitford was there from her pretty cottage 
near Reading : John Forster was taking notes for a friendly 
notice in the Examiner, and with him was his new friend 
Robert Browning. After the excitement of the theatre came 
the supper at 56 Russell Square, with the toasts to Macready 
the actor, to Ellen Tree the actress, to Talfourd the host and 
dramatist — whose birthday it happened to be — and as we 
have seen, to the youthful poet, Robert Browning. As the 
guests were dispersing, Macready turned to the young poet 
of twenty-four and said, " with an affectionate gesture, ' Will 
you not write me a tragedy, and save me from going to 
America .''"* Browning was willing enough, but he was 
already so deep in Sordello, that two months elapsed before 
Forster, Macready's neighbour in Lincoln's Inn Fields, called 
to say that the subject decided upon was Strafford. "He 

' Robert Browning., Persofuilia, by Edmund Gosse, p. 43. 



io8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

could not have hit on one which I could have more readily 
concurred in," was the comment of Macready.^ Decided 
upon slowly, Strafford was slowly written. The Blot in the. 
'Scutcheon and The Return of the Drtises are each said to 
have been written in five days : nearly eight months passed 
before Strafford was completed. In March, 1837, when 
Macready read the play, he at once feared that it was " too 
historical: it is," he said, "the policy of the man and its 
consequences upon him — not the heart, temper, feelings that 
work on this policy, which Browning has portrayed — and 
how admirably." Osbaldiston, the manager of Covent Garden, 
however, caught at the play with avidity, agreed to produce 
it as soon as possible, and promised the author ;^I2 a night 
for twenty-five nights, and ;^I0 for each of ten subsequent 
nights should the play have such a run. A month later, 
on the evening of i May, 1837, at a quarter before seven, 
the largest theatre in London was once more, as for Ion, 
crammed from floor to ceiling, for Macready's benefit night. 
It was the first of five representations of Strafford. 

If the legitimate drama as a whole had a hard struggle 
for existence, it must be confessed that Strafford, in particular, 
had more than its share of misfortunes, Osbaldiston was on 
the verge of bankruptcy : six weeks later he had to close his 
theatre abruptly. Not " one rag " could be afforded for the 
new piece. Macready, indeed, whose reputation was at stake, 
did his utmost and looked like a Vandyke portrait. He was 
ably seconded by Helen Faucit as Lady Carlisle : but Helen 
Faucit was then but a girl of twenty, with less than twenty 
months' experience of the stage. Pym, the real hero of the 
play, was represented by Vandenhoff : praised by some, he 
was more commonly described as " a mixture of good and 
very indifferent," "sadly prosy," "rather croaky" and even 
"positively nauseous with his whining and drawling and 
slouching." As for the King Charles of Mr. Dale, it was 
pronounced to be "awfully bad," "as bad as could be," 
"utterly imbecile," "nothing short of execrable," "some one 
should have stepped out of the pit and thrust Mr. Dale from 
the stage. Anything should have been done rather than such 

' Macready's Remitiisccnres and Selections from kis Diaries and Letters, vol. ii. 
P- 43- 



PRODUCTION OF "STRAFFORD" 109 

exhibitions should be allowed to disgrace the stage of a 
* national ' theatre." The Queen, it would seem, was " a 
shade better," but " quite out of place " — " Miss Vincent 
plays Queen Henrietta — only think of that, gentle readers," 
remarked one critic, for pretty Miss Vincent was associated 
with Burmese bulls and light comedy. Others among the 
actors needed to be informed that " impeachment " did 
not mean ''poaching." What wonder then, apart from the 
peculiar character of the play, that the green-room forecast 
was " doubtful " ? What wonder that Browning was so 
annoyed at the "go" of things behind the scenes, that he 
vowed he would never write a play again as long as he lived ? 
" Perfect gallows " was his description of the situation to 
Fox a few hours before the curtain rose : and that the curtain 
should fall without considerable disapproval being manifested 
was more than Macready dared hope. 

And yet Strafford proved a success ! The fall of the 
curtain was accompanied by the "vehement cry" and the 
" unmerciful vociferation " of the galleries, as first Macready, 
then Vandenhoff, and Miss Faucit were summoned to 
bow their acknowledgments. There were also loud cries 
of "Author," "Author," doubtless from the little group of 
friendly claqueurs in the pit — of whom Sir Frederick Young 
still remembers forming one ; and Webster, the stage-manager, 
" had some difficulty in silencing the rioters by the assurance 
that the author was not in the house." The play was 
announced for repetition amid further signs of approval, and 
on the following morning the Constitutional — that short-lived 
journal so tragically connected with the fortunes of Thackeray 
— contained the following notice, probably from the pen of 
Douglas Jerrold : — 

" Such a reception as was given to this play last night gives the 
lie to any twaddling assertion that there is no taste or no patronage 
left in England for the real drama. The house in compliment to 
Mr. Macready — and likewise to the noble tragedy in which he was 
called to act the principal part — was thronged at a very early hour, 
and it was only through a sea of waving heads and bonnets that 
we were able to catch an occasional glimpse of the actor and the 
piece. . . . 

" At every concluding act the house rang with plaudits. It would 



no THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

be a poor compliment to the public, and a vain task at so short a 
notice, to attempt an analysis of the play or its beauties : we shall 
take an early opportunity of examining the work itself : to-night we 
can only testify to its signal and deserved success, 

" Some very keen critics have predicted for Mr. Browning that 
he is to rise to such an eminence as a dramatic poet as has not been 
attained by any in our time. We have not had the opportunity to 
study sufficiently the book before us to pronounce so confidently 
upon his merits, but certainly, if success be a criterion of desert, 
there are few poets who can rank more highly." 

On the second night [3 May] Stra^ord is described as 
being " received with applause, warm indeed, but not so much 
as it deserved," and the play was pronounced " by far the 
best tragedy that has been produced at this, or any other of 
our great theatres for many years." On this occasion 
Browning sat muffled up in the pit to feel the pulse of the 
audience : and four years later in the preface to Pippa Passes 
(1841) he declared "that a Pit-full of good-natured people 
applauded it." On the fourth night we hear of the " fervid 
applause " of an " admirably filled house," while the play-bill 
for that evening, Tuesday, 9 May, announced that 

"The New Tragedy of Strafford, continuing to be received with 
the same marks of approbation as attended its first representation, 
will be repeated this evening (Tuesday) and on Thursday next." 

Thursday came, but there was no Strafford, for there was 
no Pym. Vandenhoff, as Macready records, had taken scant 
interest in his part. Moreover, though in 1835 he had 
accepted what Macready had refused, the part of Eleazar in 
the popular melodrama The Jewess, he took offence on 
finding himself, in 1837, advertised to take the chief part in 
Walter Tyrrel, a melodramatic " scarecrow tragedy " by 
Edward Fitzball, of which the Times remarked that " such a 
tissue of absurdities has rarely been brought together." 
Offered, at this juncture, an engagement in America, he at 
once accepted it ; and not only refused to act in Fitzball's 
play, but withdrew from Strafford also. Walter Tyrrel, how- 
ever, with its forest scenes, its blue fire and moonlight effects, 
was rapturously applauded and replaced Strafford upon the 
bills for the only two available nights before a series of 



"UNCOMMONLY WELL RECEIVED" iii 

benefits began. Among these benefits was that of Mr. 
Edward Fitzball, who among the varied attractions of 30 May, 
1837, chose "the highly popular Historical Tragedy written 
by — Browning, Esq., entitled Strafford,^' because, he remarks 
in his Memoirs, it had been " uncommonly well received." 

Such is the history of the production of Strafford, a drama 
whose shortcomings are so obvious that some of the critics 
of 1837 did not fail to point them out: but what is most 
important is, that all united in acknowledging the promise 
which the play afforded. The dramatic critic of John Bull, 
for instance, the most fearless and discriminating of the day, 
praised the opening scene as spirited, found the end of act 
III a veritable coup de thedtre worthy of the French stage, 
and pronounced act IV touching and poetically devised. 
Yet he condemned the play as a whole ; but in so doing 
wrote as follows : — 

" Now, unfavourable as is our judgment on the tragedy, it has 
been given in no intolerant spirit. ... It is for the promise which 
the effort betokens that we speak, , . . The very faults of the drama 
are proofs of talent. . . . The very plainness of the language, too, 
evinces strength, and is a good augury for the future. ... In his 
next attempt, let him bring on the scene character in action, and we 
will answer for it that he triumphs." ' 

Yet in spite of this encouragement and in spite of the fact 
that Browning declared in the preface to his play — which was 
published by Messrs Longman, at their own expense, on the 
day of representation — that even failure would not discourage 
him from another effort, " Robert Browning, writer of plays," 
did not re-appear as an acted dramatist for nearly six years : 
and this is the more remarkable inasmuch as events seemed 
distinctly to favour him. Within five months of the acting 
of Strafford Macready had become the manager of Covent 
Garden theatre, with a splendid troupe of actors, all pledged 
to uphold the better traditions of the stage. This position 
he retained for two years, during which Browning was in 
constant attendance, from the night of 30 September, 1837, 

' Strafford was revived by the Oxford University Dramatic Society in the year 
following its author's death, and proved a great success. The part of Strafford was 
played by Mr. H. B. Irving, of New College. 



112 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

when Macready recited the opening address of his friend 
Talfourd, until that of i6 July, 1839, when he stood amid piles 
of bouquets, wreaths and laurel branches, to bid farewell to his 
enthusiastic audience. In April, 1838, a week before Brown- 
ing sailed for Italy, he was sharing in the enthusiasm with 
which the Two Foscari was represented for Macready's benefit 
at Covent Garden, and immediately after his return, three 
months later, he was at the Haymarket, admiring the actor's 
Kitely. Day after day, during rehearsals, Browning might 
have been seen seated on the stage by the prompter's table, 
together with men like W. J. Fox, Dickens, Bulwer, Forster 
and Maclise. On 16 December, 1838, he was one of a select 
committee invited to listen to the first reading of Bulwer's 
Richelieu, and long afterwards it gave him satisfaction to 
recall that he had pronounced the first verdict in its favour 
when he silently wrote down his opinion — " a great play." Nay, 
so full was his mind of the theatre that he apologized at the 
beginning of Sordcllo for adopting the narrative form rather 
than the dramatic : and although during his Italian trip he 
wrote hardly a line of the poem for which he had undertaken 
his journey to Italy, yet he could not resist jotting down a 
scene for a play in passing through the Straits of Gibraltar. 
Not only so, but within two months of the representation of 
Strafford, Browning with a brain full of "half conceptions, 
floating fancies " had no fewer than three new plays in view. 
He had definitely selected one " splendid subject," and wrote 
— dispensing with the formality of an introduction — to Mr. 
Payne Collier to state that 

" Mr. Browning is desirous of obtaining Mr. Collier's permission to 
look over the MS. ballad of T/ie Athdsfs Tragedy'' — which had 
been quoted in the New Particidars of 1836 — "as it would be of 
essential service to him in a work he is about to begin." 

This subject, however, was promptly discarded owing to the 
appearance in the Monthly Repository of August, 1837, of his 
friend R. H. Home's one-act tragedy The Death of Marlowe. 
But in the letter to Miss Haworth in which Browning 
mentions this, he also mentions that he is eager to begin two 
more plays, one of which he " meant to have ready in a short 
time." This was King Victor and King Charles. For the 



"A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON" 113 

other, he was still in search of " a subject of the most wild 
and passionate love," involving " self-devotement, self- 
forgetting " : this became, how soon it cannot be said, The 
Return of the Druses. Both plays were designed for the 
stage, and with a view to economy of production both plays 
have but one scene ; both, it seems, were submitted to Mac- 
ready, and both were refused by him. Rightly or wrongly 
they were, in his judgment, rather suited — to borrow the 
Athencmm's phraseology —for the closet than for the stage* 
Further, it seems that the actor's criticism upon the con- 
ception of self- forgetting love as embodied in the Anael of 
the Druses led Browning to produce in hot haste his other 
picture of self-forgetting devotion, A Blot in the ^Scutcheon, 
the completion of which was announced to Macready in the 
following rather apologetic note : — 

" Hanover Cottage, 

" Southampton [St.] 

" Monday morning. 
" My dear Macready, 

" ' The luck of the third adventure ' is proverbial. I have 
written a spick and span new Tragedy (a sort of compromise between 
my own notion Sj.e. in the Dr7ises\ and yours — as I understand it at 
least) and will send it to you if you care to be bothered so far. 
There is action in it, drabbing, stabbing, et autres gentillesses, — 
who knows but the Gods may make me good even yet? Only, 
make no scruple of saying flatly that you cannot spare the time, if 
engagements of which I know nothing, but fancy a great deal, 
should claim ev6ry couple of hours in the course of this week. 

" Yours ever truly, 

" Robert Browning " * 

This letter — undated as is usual with the poet's early 
letters — must have been written before the end of December, 
1840, for in that month the Brownings left Southampton 
Street: but the play was not accepted by Macready until 
the autumn of 1841, toward the close of his third Haymarket 
engagement under Webster [3 July to 7 December, 1841], 
and it was not produced till February, 1843, more than two 

' Letters from Robert Browning to Various Correspondents, vol. i. p. 6, edited 
by Thomas J. Wise. 
I 



114 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

years after it was offered to him. Its production led, un- 
happily, to a complete breach between the friends. 

In justice to Macreadysome facts must be borne in mind. 
His first management at Covent Garden [30 September, 1837 
to 16 July, 1839] had not resulted in the material success he 
had anticipated ; at its close, therefore, he adopted the safer 
course of acting for two and a half years under Webster at 
the Haymarket, until, in December, 1841, he ventured once 
-more to undertake management, this time at Drury Lane. 
Strafford, as even Browning's friends allowed, was not a 
popular play : its success had really been the success of 
Macready the actor, and not of Browning the inexperienced 
dramatist. Moreover, in 1840, Browning had seriously 
damaged his position by the enigmatical Sordello ; and, 
meanwhile, Macready had discovered in the popular, versatile 
Bulwer a dramatist who was both able and willing to meet 
his requirements. Bulwer's first play the Duchess de la 
Valli^re, produced by Osbaldiston a few months before 
Strafford, had been a failure : his Cromwell, Macready 
had refused : but his Lady of Lyons [15 February, 1838], 
after trembling in the balance, proved a decided success and 
was acted thirty-three times. His Richelieji, altered and 
rewritten as Macready dictated, proved the greatest triumph 
of that actor's Covent Garden management [7 March, 1839] : 
" the vast pit seemed to rock with enthusiasm as it volleyed 
its admiration in rounds of thunder," so that for three months 
Macready had no need to make any new effort of importance. 
When Money was produced at the Haymarket it ran for 
eighty consecutive nights, and a special licence from the Lord 
Chamberlain had to be obtained to extend the theatrical 
season for a couple of months. 

Such had been Macready's experiences when he began his 
second management on 27 December, 1841, having already 
promised to produce the Blot. On 4 April, 1842, "a new 
play " was advertised as being in active preparation : three 
days later the name was announced. It was Plighted Troth 
by a brother of George Darley, which was acted on 
20 April. Macready was confident of success ; yet the play 
proved an utter failure. " The piece should never have been 
produced," said the Times. "Produced and damned," was 



DICKENS ENTHUSIASTIC 115 

the comment of John Bull. It was one of the bitterest dis- 
appointments of Macready's life. On Sunday, i May, he 
frankly wrote to Browning that this unforeseen event had 
" smashed his arrangements altogether," and three weeks 
later, on 23 May, he prematurely closed his theatre. The 
next season opened on i October, and by the end of the 
month the speedy production of another new play began to 
be announced daily. Four weeks elapsed, and the bills 
disclosed that this was the Patricians Daughter, a published 
play by J. Westland Marston, a youth of twenty-two, and 
already a friend of Browning. Marston had heard Macready 
speak in high terms of Browning's tragedy, and the question 
of its representation had evidently been under consideration. 
Doubts, however, had arisen as to how the public might 
regard the situation upon which the play turns — a situation 
due to the direct suggestion of Macready himself. Macready 
consulted Forster, to whom he handed the manuscript. 
Forster seems to have shared, if, indeed, he did not originate, 
these doubts. He passed the play on to Dickens, who was 
at that moment, at Macready's desire, writing the prologue 
for the Patrician's Daughter. On 25 November, 1842, as the 
following passage from a letter to Forster shows, Dickens 
gave emphatic expression to his utter dissent from the views 
of his friends : — 

" Browning's play has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow. 
To say that there is anything in its subject save what is lovely, true, 
deeply affecting, full of the best emotion, the most earnest feeling, 
and the most true and tender source of interest, is to say that there 
is no light in the sun, and no heat in the blood. It is full of genius, 
natural and great thoughts, profound and yet simple and beautiful in 
its vigour. I know nothing that is so affecting, nothing in any book 
I have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that ' I was so young — 
I had no mother.' I know no love like it, no passion like it, no 
moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it. And I 
swear it is a tragedy that MUST be played : and must be played, 
moreover, by Macready. . . . And if you tell Browning that I have 
seen it, tell him that I believe from my soul there is no man living 
(and not many dead) who could produce such a work." [Forster's 
Dickens, ed. 1873, vol. ii. p. 25.] 

Forster did not tell Browning, who remained unaware of 



ii6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the existence of this letter, until its appearance thirty years 
later, in the Life of Dickens ! This fact, taken in connexion 
with certain words used by Forster next year with regard to 
Colomhe's Birthday, seems to point to the probability of 
Forster's having had more to do with the unhappy fate of 
the Blot than has hitherto been imagined. 

The story of the production of the play has been several 
times told with various degrees of accuracy ; but the only 
contemporary account is that of Browning's friend Joseph 
Arnould, who in May, 1843, thus wrote to Alfred Domett 
in New Zealand : — 

"Well, on the nth of February his play A Blot in the 'Scutcheon 
(three acts) was brought out at Drury Lane. That was all the public 
knew about the facts ; but those who knew Browning were also aware 
of a little history of bad feeling, intrigue and petty resentment, which, 
I fancy, making all allowance for both sides, amounts just to this : 
Macready had the usual amount of plays on hand and promises 
to authors unperformed when you and I witnessed the * deep 
damnation' of the bringing forth of Plighted Troth. That shook 
him a good deal. He might possibly, remembering Strafford, have 
looked doubtfully at Browning's chance of writing a play that would 
take ; and he brought out two new plays, one of which {The Patrician's 
Daughter) had a decent success, while still nothing was heard of 
Browning's play. Meanwhile judicious friends, as judicious friends 
will, had a habit of asking Browning when the play was coming out 
You can fancy how sensitively Browning would chafe at this. At 
length the paramount object with him became to have the play acted, 
no matter how, so that it was at once. With these feelings he forced 
Macready to name an early day for playing it. The day was named : 
Macready was to take the part of Austin Tresham, which was made for 
him ; ^ and everything was going on swimmingly, when lo ! a week or 
so before the day of representation, Macready declines altogether his 
part, unless the play can be postponed till after Easter, Browning 
naturally 'in a sultry chafe' at this, declines postponement: with 
haughty coolness indicates that, if Mr, Phelps will take the part he 
shall be perfectly satisfied, and under this new arrangement, Mr, 
Phelps having zealously laboured his part, comes the last rehearsal 
day. Macready then again appears, hints that he has studied the 
character— will act the first night. Upon this our Robert does not 

' An obvious slip : Thorold, Lord Tresham, is meant. 



ARNOULD'S DESCRIPTION 117 

fall prone at his feet and worship him for his condescending good- 
ness : not that at all does our Robert do, but quite other than that. 
With laconic brevity he positively declines taking the part from 
Phelps — dispenses with Macready's aid, etc. And all this in the 
face of a whole green room ! You imagine the fury and whirlwind 
of our managerial wrath — silent fury — a compressed whirlwind — 
volcano-fires burning white in our pent heart. We say nothing, of 
course ; but we do our spiteful uttermost ; we give no orders [i.e. free 
orders for admission to the theatre ; even Browning himself did not 
receive any] ; we provide paltry machinery ; we issue mandates to 
all our dependent pen-wielders — to all tribes of men who rejoice in 
suppers and distinguished society, under penalty of our managerial 
frown that they are to be up and doing in their dirty work. The 
results of their admirable labours I have enclosed for your inspection, 
and now may proceed to give you an exacter notion of the real 
reception the piece met with." 

Among these " admirable labours " was the notice in the 
Times, which after declaring that the play was " one of the 
most faulty dramas we ever beheld," allowed that a " moderate 
success " had been achieved. But the criticism which Brown- 
ing most deeply resented was that of the one whom forty years 
later he wrote of as Macready's " Athaneum upholder": — 

" If to pain and perplex were the end and aim of tragedy, Mr. 
Browning's poetic melodrama, called A Blot in the 'Scutcheon would 
be worthy of admiration, for it is a very puzzling and unpleasant 
piece of business. The plot is plain enough, but the acts and 
feelings of the characters are inscrutable and abhorrent, and the 
language is as strange as their proceedings. ... A few of the 
audience laughed, others were shocked, and many applauded ; but it 
is impossible that such a drama should live even if it were artfully 
constructed, which this is not. . . . The farce [which followed the 
Bbt\ was the more amusing for the foregone horrors. [Athencemn, 
18 February, 1843, P- ^66.] 

Arnould's letter, which, as being the only known account 
of the three representations of the Blot, has a quite unique 
value, continues : — 

" The first night was magnificent (I assume that Browning has 
sent you the play). Poor Phelps did his utmost, Helen Faucit 
very fairly, and there could be no mistake at all about the honest 
enthusiasm of the audience. The gallery— and of course this was 



Ii8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

very gratifying, because not to be expected at a play of Browning's — 
took all the points as quickly as the pit, and entered into the general 
feeling and interest of the action far more than the boxes, some of 
whom took it upon themselves to be shocked at being betrayed into 
so much interest in a young woman who had behaved so improperly 
as Mildred. Altogether the first night was a triumph. The second 
night was evidently presided over by the spirit of the manager. I 
was one of about sixty or seventy in the pit, and we yet seemed 
crowded compared to the desolate emptiness of the boxes. The 
gallery was again full, and again, among all who were there, were 
the same decided impressions of pity and horror produced. The 
third night I took my wife again to the boxes : it was evident at a 
glance that it was to be the last. My own delight and hers, too, in 
the play, was increased at this third representation, and would have 
gone on increasing to a thirtieth; but the miserable great chilly house, 
with its apathy and emptiness, produced on us both the painful 
sensation which made her exclaim that * she could cry with 
vexation ' at seeing so noble a play so basely marred. Now there 
can be no doubt whatever that the absence of Macready's name 
from the list of performers of the new play was the means of keeping 
away numbers from the house. Whether, if he had played and they 
had come, the play would have been permanently popular is another 
question. I don't myself think it would. With some of the grandest 
situations and the finest passages you can conceive, it does un- 
doubtedly want a sustained interest to the end of the third act; 
in fact, the whole of that act on the stage is a falling off from 
the second act, which I need not tell you is for all purposes of 
performance the unpardonable fault. Still it will no doubt have — 
nay it must have done this — viz. produced a higher opinion than 
ever of Browning's genius and the great things he is yet to do in the 
minds not only of a clique, but of the general world of readers. No 
one now would shake his head if you said of our Robert Browning, 
* This man will go far yet.' " 

Arnould's account is substantially in agreement with 
Browning's own version of the aflfair, as communicated long 
afterwards to Mr. Frank Hill, editor of the Daily News ; 
whom he further informed that Macready had proposed to 
cut down the text of the play considerably, and to mitigate 
its tragic ending by making Tresham not swallow poison, 
but announce his intention of withdrawing to a monastery.^ 

* The letter to Mr. Hill is given in its entirety in Mrs. Orr's Life^ pp. 1 18- 



QUARREL WITH MACREADY 119 

Browning at the time was justly angry : " Macready has 
used me vilely," he wrote to Domett. The truth was that 
Macready wished to be released from his engagement, and 
instead of saying so plainly, chose the unpleasant course of 
putting every sort of difficulty in the way. Browning had 
not sufficient experience of the theatre to see through these 
manoeuvres. " One friendly straightforward word," he said to 
Mr. William Archer forty-five years later, " to the effect that 
what was intended for an advantage, would, under circum- 
stances of which I was altogether ignorant, prove the reverse ; 
how easy to have spoken it, and what regret it would have 
spared us both ! " 

Their friendship was at an end. Some twenty years 
afterwards they met, each saddened by the loss of his wife, 
and it was to shake hands and forgive. " I found Macready 
as I left him — and happily after a long interval resumed 
him," wrote Browning the year before he died — 

" one of the most admirable, and, indeed, fascinating characters 
I have ever known : somewhat too sensitive for his own happiness, 
and much too impulsive for invariable consistency with his nobler 
moods." ^ 

One other of Browning's dramas led to a quarrel with a 
friend. The play was Colombe's Birthday^ and the friend 
John Forster. 

During Macready's management at Drury Lane, Charles 
Kean — son of the Edmund Kean at whose shrine Browning 
had worshipped some ten years before — was performing at 
Covent Garden. Kean was anxious to perform in new parts, 
and after the quarrel with Macready he opened negotiations 
with Browning, to whom he was disposed to offer ^500 for a 
suitable play. Within three months Browning had written, 
though not actually completed, Colombe's Birthday : for reasons 
unknown, the drama was not finished until March, 1844. 
The circumstances in which it was then read to Kean and 

123. Mr. Gosse, in Robert Browning, Personalia, has embalmed Macready's 
emendation : — 

" Within a monastery's solitude, 
Penance and prayer shall wear my life away." 

' Eminent Actors, edited by William Archer, p. 214. 



120 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

his wife are set forth in the following letter to Christopher 
Dowson : — 

" New Cross, 

"March lo [1844]. 
"My dear Dowson, 

"You may remember I told you my appointment with 
C. Kean had been for that morning (Monday, i.e. March 4), and 
then stood over for the next Saturday (yesterday) — but that, having 
made an effort and ended work the evening I saw you, I meant to 
call on Kean the following morning. I did so, but in consequence 
of my letter, received the day before, his arrangements were made 
for the week, so that till Saturday the business had to wait. Yesterday 
I read my play to him, and his charming wife [Ellen Tree] — who is 
to take the principal part. All went off aji mietix — but — he wants 
to keep it till ' Easter next year/ and unpublished all the time ! His 
engagement at the Haymarket, next May, is merely for twelve nights, 
he says. He leaves London for Scotland to-morrow, or next day, 
and will be occupied for ten hours a day till he returns. My play 
will take him two months at least to study, he being a special slow 
head, and after the Haymarket engagement nothing is to be done 
till this time next year. Of all which notable pieces of information 
I was apprised for the first time after the play was read and approved 
of — for it certainly never entered into my mind that anybody, even 
an actor, could need a couple of months to study a part, only, in 
a piece, which I could match with such another in less time by a 
good deal. 

" But though I could do such a thing, I have a head — that aches 
oftener now than of old— to take care of; and, therefore, will do no 
such thing as let this new work lie stifled for a year and odd, and 
work double tides to bring out something as likely to be popular 
this present season. For something I must print, or risk the hold, 
such as it is, I have at present on my public — and, on consideration 
of the two or three other productions ^ I have by me in a state of 
forwardness, neither seems nearly so proper for the requirements of 
the moment as this play ; and two or three hundred pounds will pay 
me but indifferently for hazarding the good fortune which appears 
slowly but unmistakeably settling in upon me, just now. You will 
not wonder, therefore, that— though I was so far taken by surprise 
as to promise Kean a copy for Scotland and a fortnight's grace to 
come to terms in, before I either published this play or accepted any 
other party's offer— I say, you will not wonder if I have determined 

' Luria and A SouPs Tragedy. 



FATE OF "COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY" 121 

to print it directly. Acting on the best advice, I sent it to press 
yesterday, and merely put the right of the acting at his disposal — if he 
will purchase it with such a drawback as Macready would ; for I fear 
the only alternative I shall allow — that of his getting up the part for 
next May — is quite beyond his power. The poorest man of letters 
(if really of letters) I ever knew is of far higher talent than the best 
actor I ever expect to know; nor is there one spangle too many, 
one rouge-smutch too much on their outside man, for the inward. 
Can't study a speech in a month ! God help them, and bless you, 
my dear Dowson, says and prays 

" Yours, 

" R. Browning 

" I will communicate the end of the matter when I have it." ^ 

Never again did Browning write for the stage. Colombe's 
Birthday remsXned unacted till 1853, when the faithful Phelps 
successfully produced it at the Haymarket, with Helen Faucit 
as the heroine. But in 1844 the "end of the matter" was a 
quarrel, certainly not of Browning's seeking, with Forster, 
who reviewed the printed play in the Examiner of 22 June. 
His closing words were as follows : — 

" There can be no question as to the nerve and vigour of this 
writing, or of its grasp of thought. Whether the present generation 
of readers will take note of it or leave it to the uncertain mercies of 
the future, still rests with Mr. Browning himself. As far as he has 
gone, we abominate his tastes as much as we respect his genius." 

It was these words which led Browning in September, 
1845, to speak of Forster to Miss Barrett as his "old foe."^ 
A month later, however, one is glad to add, Forster called 
and was "very profuse of graciocities," so, declared Browning, 
" we will go on again with the friendship as the snail repairs 
his battered shell "^ ; and he accepted an invitation to go and 
see the amateur representation of Every Man in his Humour, 
wherein Forster acted Bobadil to the Kitely of Charles 
Dickens. The days were yet far off when the " battered 
shell " could no longer be repaired. 

' Letters from Robert Browning to Various Correspondents, edited by Thomas J, 
Wise, privately printed, vol. i. pp. 7-1 1. 

- R. B. to E. B. B., vol. i. p. 212 (postmark, 18 September, 1845). 
» Ibid., vol. i. p, 245 (postmark, 15 October, 1845). 



CHAPTER VIII 
"BELLS AND POMEGRANATES" 

The Brownings' removal to Hatcham — Bells and Pomegranates — The 
title explained — Pippa Passes — Sources of some Dramatic Lyrics and 
Romances — Browning's second Italian journey — Ruskin's praise — Politics 
of the time — 77^1? Lost Leader — Browning's delineations of love — His use 
of the dramatic monologue — His gradual advance in favour — Appreciated 
by Landor and Carlyle — His literary friendships — Carlyle — Miss 
Martineau — Miss Martineau and Sordello — Chorley — " Barry Cornwall " 
— Miss Haworth's admiration — The fateful meeting with John Kenyon — 
*' R. B., a poem." 

OUR endeavour to present a continuous narrative of 
Browning's active connection with the theatre has 
entailed the momentary displacement of other 
matters, both literary and domestic, to which return must 
now be made. 

In December, 1840, rather more than three years before 
the publication of Colomhe's Birthday, the Browning family, 
desirous of greater space within doors and without, left 
Camberwell for a larger house at Hatcham. To reach it, as 
the poet wrote to Laman Blanchard, one had to " conquer 
the interminable Kent Road, pass the turnpike at New 
Cross, and take the first lane with a quickset hedge to the 
right. We have a garden," he adds, " and trees, and little 
green hills of a sort to go out on." * 

The new home at Hatcham is associated with the eight 
parts of Bells and Pomegranates, with the courtship of Robert 
Browning, and with the death of his mother. The builder's 
hand has swept away the old-fashioned three-storeyed 

' The letter is printed in the memoir, by Blanchard Jerrold, prefixed to The 
Poetical Works of Laman Blanchard, London, 1876. 



THE NEW HOME AT HATCHAM 123 

cottage, once a farmhouse ; the pond is filled up, the holly 
hedges, the shrubs, the rose bushes, the chestnut-tree and 
the orchard have vanished : the neighbouring mansion, with 
its large grounds and stately cedar of Lebanon, is gone : 
the stile, the open fields and the elm trees behind have 
disappeared. And though one can still look northwards 
over London from the adjoining Telegraph Hill — which 
Wordsworth, when told that Browning "lived over there," 
termed, in the language of the Lakes, a " rise " — it is from 
amid a mass of bricks and mortar. But in the forties one 
might have climbed the staircase, as " Waring " did, past the 
bust of Shelley and the drawing-room where Browning loved 
to play Beethoven or Handel, to the large, low upper room 
crammed with books, and to the adjacent study where was 
the little desk and russet portfolio, containing poems yet 
unpublished. There, upon the wall above, hung the precious 
" Andromeda " of Caravaggio, rescued years since from 
among the father's prints and the desecrating neighbourhood 
of a group of Ostade's boors ; there, too, was the skull, in the 
jaws of which a spider was allowed to spin his web.^ In this 
room Browning worked, clad in blue shirt and blue blouse ; 
and here were written the letters to Miss Barrett, only to be 
discontinued when the unbroken companionship of marriage 
did away with the need for them. 

Colombe's Birthday, when published in 1844, formed the 
sixth of the eight parts of what its author quaintly named 
Bells and Pomegranates. In a note prefixed to the conclud- 
ing number he declared himself surprised that this title 
should have perplexed his readers, and explained that it was 
intended to express " something like an alternation, or 
mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry 
with thought." The symbolism is certainly not so obvious 
as he supposed it to be, though it becomes rather clearer on 
reference to a passage in the Book of Exodus : — 

"And beneath upon the hem of it (the High Priest's ephod) 
thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet ; 
and bells of gold between them round about : a golden bell and a 
pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about." * 

> Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 28. 
* Exodus, ch. xxviii. verses 33 and 34. 



124 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Diction of this sort, instinct as it is with chiming sound and 
vivid colour, would instantly captivate Browning's imagina- 
tion, while the meaning which he read into the passage may 
well have been, although unconsciously, not the primary 
cause of its appeal. Be this as it may, it is characteristic of 
him that he expects his reader to be as clear-sighted as 
himself; and for the title, when its significance is perceived, 
it needs no justification as applied to a series which includes 
Pippa Passes, My Last Duchess^ The Lost Mistress and the 
first part of Saul. 

Bells and Pomegranates appeared at intervals between 
1 84 1 and 1846. The successive numbers were issued at the 
expense of the author's father by Edward Moxon, whose 
connection with Browning "had begun with Sordello. Moxon» 
the poet-publisher, eleven years Browning's senior, had 
married Lamb's adopted daughter, and was the friend to 
whom the Essayist had bequeathed his books ; he was also 
the friend and publisher of Wordsworth and of Rogers, 
and brought out books for Tennyson, Sir Henry Taylor and 
Coventry Patmore. He was well known to Talfourd, whose 
privately printed Ion he had circulated, and to Forster, so 
that it was easy for Browning through them to come in touch 
with 44, Dover Street, where until his marriage he was a 
frequent visitor, listening to the gossip about Tennyson's 
sensitiveness to criticism, or his isolation at Mablethorpe, 
where his letters were delivered by the muffin man : hear- 
ing how Wordsworth had gone to Court in Rogers' suit, 
or seeing poor Campbell dozing unnoticed over the fire. 

At the end of Sordello, Moxon had advertised as " nearly 
ready" Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, and 
Mansour the Hierophant, afterwards renamed The Return of 
the Druses ; and as Browning had failed to secure a place for 
the two latter on the stage, and as Dickens in his Pickwick 
Papers had made the issue of parts popular, Moxon suggested 
that these other plays might be brought out in cheap little 
yellow, paper-covered, double-columned volumes, printed in 
the small type he was then using for his reprints of Eliza- 
bethan dramatists : the cost of each pamphlet being about 
£16. In a discarded preface Browning explained his reason 
for adopting this mode of publication. Ever since " a pit-full 



"PIPPA PASSES" 125 

of good-natured people " had applauded Strafford, he had 
been "desirous of doing something in the same way that 
should better reward their attention " ; and, added he, with 
rather a pathetic reference to his rejected dramas, 

" what follows I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical Pieces 
to come out at intervals, and I amuse myself by fancying that the 
cheap mode in which they appear will for once help me to a sort of 
Pit audience again." 

At first, it seems, the design was to confine the series to 
plays, and a revised text of Strafford was to be included ; ^ 
but, possibly because the first two parts had no great sale, 
Moxon suggested that it might be advisable " for popularity's 
sake " '-^ to issue a collection of small poems. The Dramatic 
Lyrics of 1842 and Romances of 1845 are the outcome of this 
advice. 

The series opened with Pippa Passes, which Miss Barrett 
could find it in her heart to envy, and which Browning in 
1845 declared he liked better than anything he had so far 
produced.^ Pippa was written after Browning returned from 
Italy, and while he was finishing Sordello. It may, indeed, 
be described as an indirect product of Sordello, for it is no 
mere chance that Sordello closes with a barefoot child climb- 
ing the dewy Asoloan hillside in the early morning and 
singing " to beat the lark, God's poet, swooning at his feet " ; 
and that Pippa Passes should begin with the barefoot maiden 
climbing the same slopes and singing that 

" Morning's at seven ; 
The hill-side's dew-pearled ; 
The lark's on the wing." 

Pippa, indeed, seems to have been conceived as a direct 
contrast to Sordello. The circumstances of the origin of 
Pippa have been recorded. Browning was indulging in one 
of his frequent solitary walks in the Dulwich wood, doubtless 
thinking of the changes to be made in Sordello, when 

* Kenyon's Robert Browning OTtd Alfred Domett, p. 38, 

* Ibid. p. 36. 

* Letters e/R.B.and E. B. B.y toI. i. p. 28. 



126 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

"the image flashed upon him of one walking thus alone through 
life ; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, 
yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of 
it ; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo, 
Felippa, or Pippa." ^ 

Pippa therefore, like Sordello, is solitary, but the life of 
the solitary self-conscious Sordello, (of whom Browning had 
evidently come to weary, or he could not have described that 
life as a " sorry farce "), accomplishes nothing, and his song 
is of no avail, while the lonely little Pippa is utterly un- 
conscious of self, yet her songs affect the lives of all with 
whom she comes in contact — the beautiful Ottima and her 
lover Sibald, the sculptor Jules and his bride Phene, Luigi 
and his mother, Monsignior the Bishop — and through him, 
it is suggested, the destiny of the singer herself. As 
if to accentuate the contrast Browning has given them 
this in common, that both are stolen children, Sordello 
brought up as a dependent, Pippa in poverty, while each is 
ultimately revealed as the only child of wealthy parents ; and 
both works deal, to a degree unknown elsewhere even in 
Browning, with a series of crises. Moreover, the " light from 
heaven " which finally falls upon Sordello is but a gleam 
which brightens his death : the light of God shines about 
Pippa from the outset — " God's in his heaven, all's right with 
the world." Not without reason, therefore, was the scene of 
Pippa Passes laid in Venetian territory and in the lovely 
district of Asolo, for Pippa is the triumph of that vision of 
Humanity which had come to Browning in the island city. 
Palma has once more fallen from her pedestal, to be replaced 
as Queen by one of the contadini from " delicious Asolo," 
whom Browning describes himself as watching as they " bind 
June lilies into sheaves to deck the bridge-side chapel." ^ 

Part II. of the Bells, published in the spring of 1842, 
consisted of King Victor and King Charles, a drama modelled 
on the simple lines of Alfieri, whose works Browning had 
been studying very closely. In November, or early in 
December, there appeared as Part III. the Dramatic Lyrics. 

' Mrs. Orr, Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning, p. 55, 6th edition. 
' Sordello, iii. line 684. 



THE LYRIC MUSE 127 

A month or so later, in January, 1843, Part IV. contained 
The Return of the Druses ; while Part V., which appeared on 
February 11, the day on which A Blot in the 'Scutcheon was 
produced, contained the text of this play, hastily printed in 
twenty-four hours by Moxon, in order to prevent Macready's 
attempt to mutilate it Thus three parts of the Bells had 
appeared in a little over three months, and the delay of a 
year before Colombe's Birthday was sent to the printer 
(9 March, 1844) quite explains Browning's inability to accede 
to Kean's request for a further delay of still another twelve 
months. Twenty months more elapsed before the Dramatic 
Romances and Lyrics could be put together (Nov. 1845) 
for many of these were new poems. Part VIII., containing 
two plays, A Soul's Tragedy and Luria, closed the series : 
this appeared on 13 April, 1846. Neither play was written 
for the stage. "I have lost of late interest in dramatic 
writing, as you know, and perhaps occasion," was the ex- 
planation giving by Browning to Miss Barrett. We have 
seen the reason. 

The Dramatic Lyrics and Romances of 1842 and 1845, 
consisting of about forty poems, afford further evidence, if 
such be needed, of the perfectly natural manner in which 
their author found subjects for his verse. In 1836, for 
example, Leigh Hunt's The Glove and the Lion appeared in 
the New Monthly Magazine, a review in which Browning was 
particularly interested. Adopting quite a different view of 
the episode, and as a kind of criticism upon that of Hunt, he 
produced his own version of it, TJie Glove, in which he makes 
out a good case for the lady who dares her lover to brave the 
lion. The vigorous Cavalier Tunes are a later fruit of studies 
which went to the composition of Strafford. The first four 
lines of Home Thoughts from the Sea are an exact transcript 
of the scene which he beheld from the deck of the Norham 
Castle on the evening of Friday, 27 April, 1838, on his first 
voyage to Italy : — 

" Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away ; 
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay ; 
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay ; 
In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and 
gray." 



128 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

And then follows the reflection, memorable among the 
patriotic utterances of our literature, which such a sight 
naturally inspired in such a gazer : — 

" ' Here and here did England help me : how can I help England ' — 
say, 
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, 
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa." 

A few days later, while they coasted along the northern 
shores of Africa, the confinement of a sailing vessel aroused 
memories of many a delightful gallop upon the good horse 
" York,"then in the stables at Camberwell, and Good New^ from 
Ghent was written. Glimpses of the Algerian coast made more 
real and vivid to the traveller the struggle with the French 
maintained for fifteen years by the resourceful Arab chieftain 
Abd-el-Kadr, so that, on his return home, to the beat of his 
horse's hoofs he one day composed his anapaestic verses, " As 
I ride, as I ride." Again, the contrast between an Italian 
June and the English April which had witnessed his de- 
parture suggested the Home Thoughts from Abroad. This 
lyric should be dear to all who love England, and may serve 
to allay any rising jealousy which the later De Gustibus 
might otherwise occasion, since it shows that the poet's heart 
was not entirely given to Italy! Rtidel to the Lady of 
Tripoli is hewn from the quarry of Troubadour literature 
from which Sordello had already emerged. The seven lines 
which now stand at the beginning of In a Gondola were at 
first a separate entity. Browning wrote them towards the 
close of 1 84 1 by Forster's request, and in his chambers at 
Lincoln's Inn, by way of illustration of The Serenade, a 
picture by their friend Maclise, exhibited at the British 
Institution next year. Forster described the picture to 
Browning, and " pressed me," says the latter, " into com- 
mitting verse on the instant." ^ The seven lines were 
expanded into two hundred after he had seen the painting. 
The origins of Waring and of Tlie Pied Piper, both written 
in 1842, have already been traced. During the same year, 
inspired by the recollection of a song which as a child he had 
heard sung by a woman one Guy Fawkes' day, " Following 

* Letter to Miss Hawortb, quoted in Mrs. Orr's Lifty p. 134. 



HIS SECOND ITALIAN JOURNEY 129 

the Queen of the Gipsies, O," he began TJie Flight of the 
Duckess, but, being interrupted by a friend's call, put the 
poem aside for a while. Some months later, in September, 
when he was staying with Sir John Hanmer at Bethsfield 
Park, in Flint, the chance remark of Kinglake, a fellow-guest, 
that the " deer had already to break the ice in the pond," 
acted as a spur to lagging imagination ; and on his return to 
town he resumed his work with an embodiment of the incident 
which Kinglake had observed : — 

" Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning, 
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning, 
A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice 
That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice 
Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold, 
And another and another, and faster and faster, 
Till dimpling to blindness the wide water rolled." ^ 

A few more examples may be cited. The story of Saul 
and David might well attract any poet, but Browning in 
particular ; for, as we have seen, Christopher Smart's Song to 
David was with him an old favourite, and he was familiar 
with Alfieri's drama on the same subject. Further travel, 
too, was the occasion of other numbers. The year 1844 saw 
his second voyage to Italy. Landing at Naples, he wandered 
over the Piano di Sorrento, and climbed Vico Alvano, whence 
he looked down upon the Isles of the Sirens — experiences 
embodied along with others in his Englishman in Italy. 
Njw, too, was suggested its companion poem. The Italian in 
England, which Mazzini read aloud to his fellow-exiles, to 
show them how an Englishman could sympathize with their 
struggles for liberty and their sorrows.^ From Naples 
Browning journeyed northward, and beheld Rome for the 
first time. No exhaustive record remains of what he saw or 
felt. But he paid homage at the grave of Shelley ; he 
followed Byron to the grotto of Egeria, where he gathered 
hemlock in mistake for fennel ; and he wandered one day 
into the little church of Saint Prassede, hard by Saint Maria 
Maggiore — Saint Praxed's, obviously, where the sixteenth- 
century Bishop " ordered his tomb." Memorable would this 

' Wise, ut supra, vol. ii, pp. 17-19. 

" Mrs. Orr's Handbook, p. 306. He translated it into Italian. 
K 



130 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

first stay in Rome have been, had it produced nothing but 
the dying Bishop's monologue, in which the paganism under- 
lying the thin veneer of Renaissance religiosity is pitilessly 
exposed. It would be harder to find any one more capable 
of criticizing this poem than Ruskin, whose opinion of it was 
thus set on record : — 

" Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes about 
the Middle Ages, always vital, right, and profound. ... I know no 
other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so 
much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit. ... It is 
nearly all that I said of the Central Renaissance, in thirty pages 
of The Stones of Venice, put into as many lines, Browning's also being 
the antecedent work." * 

"Not deep the poet sees, but wide," wrote Matthew 
Arnold ; Browning's work, at any rate as exemplified in the 
contents of Bells and Pomegranates, cannot be cited in support 
of Arnold's theory. No thinking mind, quite apart from 
Ruskin's appreciation, will deny depth of insight to The 
Bishop orders his Tomb, to Pippa Passes, or to Saul) while 
numbers III. and VII. in particular, containing the Dramatic 
Lyrics and Dramatic Romances, bear witness to the wide 
expanse of subjects which his vision traversed, as lightning 
plays over some broad and varied landscape. Artemis 
Prologizes, admired by so discerning a critic as Matthew 
Arnold, shows that he had familiarized himself to some 
purpose with the Greek tragedians, especially with Euripides ; 
it shows, too, that he could on occasion write as lucidly and 
with as perfect choice of phrase as even his critic could desire. 
The lines were to have served as prologue to a play with 
Hippolytus for subject, but the idea was abandoned, the poet 
contenting himself with translating, many years afterwards, 
two dramas of Euripides, instead of seeking to imitate or, 
conceivably, to rival him. Artemis Prologizes remains a 
fragment, but a flawless one. Again, Browning had, as we 
know, loved pictures from his boyhood, and in the Dramatic 
Romances the dawn of his meditations upon art is visible. 
The pale, thinly-drawn figure of Pictor Ignotus is the first 
of his portrait studies of artists, and foreshadows, if but 

> Modern PainterSt vol. iv. pp. 377-9. 



"THE LOST LEADER" 131 

dimly, the clearer outlines and deeper analysis of the later 
Andrea del Sarto and Fra Lippo Lippi ; while parts of 
Waring, In a Gondola, and My Last Duchess already afford 
ample evidence of his knowledge of the art of painting and 
his great feeling for it. He touches upon music, too, and 
upon the political issues and temper of the day. Had he 
been asked what poetry has to do with politics, particularly 
current politics, he would probably have replied, not a great 
deal. But it would be a mistake to infer from their rare 
intrusion on his verse that he was indifferent to them. As a 
man he had political opinions of a very definite kind ; as a 
poet he seldom transgressed what seems to have been with 
him an unwritten canon, that they were out of place in his 
verse. The few exceptions to this rule are consequently the 
more worthy of remark. Certain lines in Waring show that 
to him, as to Carlyle, the political life of England in the 
Chartist days seemed painfully lacking in seriousness : — 

" Our men scarce seem in earnest now. 
Distinguished names ! — but 'tis, somehow, 
As if they played at being names 
Still more distinguished, like the games 
Of children." 

In the same year in which these lines were published he 
rejoices, in a letter to Domett, over Sir John Hanmer's con- 
version to anti-Corn-Law principles. To him the Corn 
Laws were so unmitigated an evil that he could hardly 
tolerate discussion of them ; and his scorn of those who 
opposed their repeal breaks out in the closing lines of The 
Englishman in Italy. As well might one debate, he avers, 

" If 'twere proper Scirocco should vanish 
In black from the skies ! " 

The Lost Leader, too, is a leader lost to liberalism. But what 
leader ? Browning has himself supplied the answer. " I did 
in my hasty youth presume to use the great and venerable 
personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model ; one 
from which this or the other particular feature may be 
selected and turned to account ; had I intended more, above 
all, such a boldness as portraying the entire man, I should 



132 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

not have talked about * handfuls of silver and bits of ribbon.' 
These never influenced the change of policy in the great 
poet ; whose defection, nevertheless, accompanied as it was 
by a regular face-about of his special party, was to my 
juvenile apprehension and even mature consideration an event 
to deplore. But just as in the tapestry on my wall I can 
recognize figures which have struck out a fancy, on occasion, 
that though truly enough thus derived yet would be pre- 
posterous as a copy, so, though I dare not deny the original 
of my little poem, I altogether refuse to have it considered 
as the * vera effigies ' of such a moral and intellectual 
superiority." ^ The details, in short, are not to be pressed, 
any more than in the case of Waring, Bishop Bloiigrmn' s 
Apology, or Mr. Sludge, the *^ Medium" Yet the idea of a 
Lost Leader, however small the underlying element of fact, 
cannot be divorced from pain ; and it was probably a relief to 
Browning to turn to foreign scenes and bygone periods — 
to the sardonic humour of the cloister in Spain, or to Gallic 
heroism on the field of battle. 

Viewed collectively, these shorter poems, whether " lyrics " 
or " romances," are a glass reflecting many passions ; but 
love's image dwarfs the rest. It is no surprise to find the 
love-interest prominent in the dramas of this series — witness 
the stories of Mertoun and Mildred, Anael and Djabal, 
Valence and Colombe — because a modern play without such 
interest is a rarity. But with the shorter poems it is the 
same. The portrait-gallery of men and women whose natures 
are glorified or degraded by this passion now begins. A 
note is struck to which the poet will be found returning 
again and again. Browning plumbed the depths of the love 
of man for woman and woman for man more impressively 
and more repeatedly than any English poet since Shakespeare. 
The insight which these poems display is the more remark- 
able if, as appears to be the case, his own experiences in this 
field had hitherto been of a purely fugitive description. The 
explanation is to be found in that keen dramatic sense which 

' Letter to the Rev. A . B. Grosart, Wise, vol. i. pp, 2S-29. Another of a 
very similar purport, and written in the same year, 1875, is given in Mrs. Orr's 
Life, p. 132. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, was opposed to Catholic 
Emancipation and the Reform Bill. A suggestion furnished by the tapestry on 
the poet's wall will be noted later. 



DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE 133 

made him feel not for but with his characters, and in the gift 
of sympathetic imagination which revealed to him the nature 
of their emotions. Let any one attempt to mend the issue of 
any one of the love poems, if he wishes to be convinced 
that in these matters Browning's instinct is unerring. Each 
shade of feeling is interpreted with an admirable delicacy. 
Love crowned with happiness in Count Gismond ; love hope- 
less yet triumphant in Cristina; love's inadequacy, that 
" cannot praise, it loves so much " ; its dainty fancifulness in 
The Flozver's Name; its humiliation in Time s Revenges ; how 
perfectly are they each and all expressed ! 

In the dramatic monologue, so freely used in the shorter 
pieces of Bells and Pomegranates, Browning had hit upon 
the poetic form which was henceforth to be peculiarly his 
own. No unessential details are admitted, and the effect is 
commonly won by concentration and a sparing use of orna- 
ment. It is impossible to dissociate these merits from his 
experience as a writer for the stage and his observation of 
theatrical exigencies ; while it must also be remembered that 
the dramatic instinct was deeply rooted in his nature, and 
grew with his intellectual growth. My Last Duchess, The 
Confessional and The Laboratory (the last named, by the way, 
being the subject of Rossetti's first water colour) are typical 
examples of his method. 

The Glove, admirable in spite of a metre which occasionally 
jars, is more ambitious. It has more background ; more 
pains are spent in suggesting the atmosphere of King Francis' 
court, but only in order to bring out in clearer relief the 
character of the king himself, of Ronsard, the narrator, and 
chiefly of de Lorge and the unnamed lady. Leigh Hunt, 
following Schiller, had in his version confined himself to the 
simple incident of the lady throwing her glove among the 
lions, her challenge to de Lorge to recover it, his acceptance 
and her repudiation. But this is not enough for Browning : — 

'* Human nature — behoves that I know it ! " 

He elicits, as Ronsard, the lady's motive ; what is more, 
follows her and de Lorge into their future lives, and (in a 
second act, so to say) shows us the harvest which honesty 
and insincerity are apt, respectively, to reap. 



134 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

His own harvest was as yet deferred. Only one number 
of Bells and Pomegranates, that containing A Blot in tlte 
^Scutcheon, reached a second impression.^ At the same time 
there is evidence that the series steadily advanced his fame. 
The larger reviews began to take more notice of him, and 
in 1844 one of their articles was reprinted in R. H. Home's 
New Spirit of the Age. But informal expressions of opinion 
from private sources are of greater interest. Walter Savage 
Landor, to whom the last Bell -was dedicated, wrote to Forster 
that Browning was 

" a great poet, a very great poet indeed, as the world will have to 
agree with us in thinking. . . . God grant he may live to be much 
greater than he is : high as he stands above most of the living, 
latis humeris et toto vertices 

To Browning himself he sent some appreciative lines, of 
which the father was so proud that he had them printed for 
circulation among his friends. Laudari a laudato viro — he 
might well be pleased at Landor's judgment. 

" Since Chaucer was alive and hale 
No man has walked along our road with step 
So active, so enquiring eye, and tongue 
So varied in discourse." 

Among the younger men of the day, too, he had his 
devotees. Ebenezer Jones, a young poet, "full," in D. G. 
Rossetti's words, " of vivid, disorderly power," used to thrust 
one of the Bells into his pocket as a companion on a country 
walk.^ W. M. Rossetti foretold that in twenty years' time 
their author would be the first of living poets. Arnould wrote 
to Domett, in 1847, 

* It was probably sold at the theatre, when the piece was played. 

* Jones, who died at the age of forty in the year i860, published one volume 
only, Studies of Sensation and Event. Of this book, Browning wrote to Mr, 
Gosse in 1878, "It was lent to me for a somewhat hurried reading. I remember 
speaking about it to W. J. Fox, who told me he knew the writer personally, and 
shared in my opinion of his power ; and, I almost think, it may have been from 
one of those roughly-printed blue-paper books that Eliot Warburton, at breakfast 
once, declaimed to me an impassioned Chartist tirade in blank verse — the speech of 
an orator addressing a crowd." Wise, ut supra, second series, vol. ii. p. 7. 



CARLYLE'S APPRECIATION 135 

" I find myself reading Paracelsus and the Dramatic Lyrics more 
often than anything else in verse. Browning and Carlyle are my 
two crowning men amongst the highest English minds of the day," 

What Carlyle thought of the poet, seventeen years his junior, 
whose name was thus coupled with his own, is clearly stated 
in one of his talks with Gavan Duffy, whom he met in Ireland 
in 1849. "I begged him," writes Duffy, 

" to tell me something of the author of a serial I had come across 
lately, called Bells and Pomegranates, printed in painfully small type, 
on inferior paper, but in which I took great delight. There were 
ballads to make the heart beat fast, and one little tragedy, A Blot 
in the 'Scutcheon, which, though not over-disposed to what he called 
sentimentality, I could not read without tears. Carlyle's answer 
was, that * Browning had a powerful intellect, and among the men 
engaged in England in literature just now was one of the few from 
whom it was possible to expect something.'" 

And when Duffy, quoting Coleridge's Suicide's Argument, 
suggested the possibility of Browning having imitated its 
manner, Carlyle replied that 

" Browning was an original man, and by no means a person who 
would consciously imitate any one. ... It would be seen by and 
bye that he was the stronger man of the two, and had no need to go 
marauding in that quarter." ^ 

The appearance of the last number of Bells and Pome- 
granates, just five months before its author's marriage and 
departure from London, where in the next fourteen years he 
was only to be an occasional sojourner, may fitly be regarded 
as the close of that literary epoch in his life which began 
eleven years earlier with the publication of Paracelsus. A 
new era, for him superlatively important, is about to begin ; 
but before we seek to tell its story a backward glance may 
be permitted. Something more must be said of the friends 
and acquaintances whom his verse had gained him in the 
earlier time, and of the houses and neighbourhoods where 
his visits, now of necessity to be interrupted, were most 
frequent. 

When, and at whose introduction, he first met Carlyle, we 

' Gavan Duffy's Conversations tuiih Carlyle, 1892, pp. 5^-57 • 



136 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

have no certain knowledge. The intimacy was certainly ten 
years old at the date of the conversation recorded by Gavan 
Duffy, for Browning and Carlyle are found dining at Mac- 
ready's early in 1839, together with Harriet Martineau and the 
Bullers. Browning soon became a familiar figure at Cheyne 
Row, and received, presumably with amusement, the sage's 
advice to give up poetry. He had a great and growing 
regard for Carlyle. 

" I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife," he writes to a friend,* 
" (catch me calling people ' dear ' in a hurry, except in letter- 
beginnings !), yesterday. I don't know any people like them." 

On the occasion of the dinner at which Miss Martineau 
was present, a son of Burns was also there, who sang some 
of his father's songs. We have glimpses of Browning listen- 
ing to Carlyle crooning " Charlie is my darling " and wishing 
that he could write a song ; lending the historian of Cromwell 
a copy of the first edition of Killing No Murder, or procuring 
from an uwilling possessor the loan of a coveted letter. 
Carlyle was sarcastic at the expense of Sordello, declaring 
that his wife had read it through without being able to make 
out whether Sordello was a man, or a city, or a book. The 
remark, like others said to have been made about this poem, 
savours of humorous exaggeration. Sordello was, in truth, a 
disappointment to many who had taken delight in Paracelsus. 
There is nothing apocryphal about Miss Martineau's opinion. 
Admiration of Paracelsus had led her to seek its author's 
acquaintance, through Fox, their common friend. 

" It was a wonderful event to me," she writes, " my first acquain- 
tance with his poetry. Mr. Macready put Paracelsus into my hand 
when I was staying at his house [at Elstree], and I read a canto 
before going to bed. . . . The unbounded expectation I formed from 
that poem was sadly disappointed when Sordello came out. I was 
so wholly unable to understand it that I supposed myself ill." ^ 

In 1837 Browning had spent a day with Miss Martineau at 
Ascot, and later visited her at Elstree. The prophetess of 
Economics and the Poor Law graciously undertook to advise 
him as to his worldly concerns, and unquestionably enjoyed 

' Miss liaworth. - Auttbio^raphy^ vol. i. p. 417. 



MISS MARTINEAU'S ESTIMATE 137 

his society. "In conversation," thus she follows up her 
remarks upon Sordello, 

" no speaker could be more absolutely clear and purpose-like. He 
was full of good sense and fine feeling, amidst occasional irritability, 
full also of fun and harmless satire, with some little affectations 
which were as droll as anything could be. A real genius was 
Robert Browning assuredly." * 

Dining at her house in Westminster in 1838, he met John 
Robertson, assistant editor of the Westminster Review^ for 
which Miss Martineau wrote, who might have proved a useful 
friend. But Browning alienated him by declining to send 
him an advance copy of Sordello for review purposes, con- 
sidering that such preferential treatment would have been 
unfair to other journals. Another guest that evening was 
Henry Chorley, musical critic of the Athenceum^ or as 
Arnould described him, " Annual-Athenaeum-Review-Novel- 
and-Opera writer, also a very pleasant clever fellow." In 
1833 Chorley had recognized from Fox's review of Pauline 
"the print of a man's foot in the sand," and when Miss 
Barrett's Romaunt of Margaret appeared in the New Monthly 
in 1836, he had learnt it by heart, and talked of it " in season 
and out of season." He was Arnould's neighbour in Victoria 
Square, Pimlico, and later he and Arnould were trustees for 
Browning's marriage. His bachelor abode was noted for the 
good music heard there — " Mendelssohn, Moscheles, Liszt, 
Ernst, David, Batta, and almost all the great instrumentalists 
of the day performed there at various times." But music 
was not everything, there was talk as well. " I am just 
returned from dining at Chorley's with Barry Cornwall and 
Browning," writes Arnould to Domett, 

" and have been enjoying a great treat. Glorious Robert Browning 
is as ever — but more genial, more brilliant, and more anecdotical 
than when we knew him four years ago." ^ 

Here, too, Browning met Charlotte Cushman, and Adelaide 
Kemble, afterwards Mrs. Sartoris. Many of Mrs. Browning's 
letters are addressed to Chorley, who dedicated to her his last 
novel, Rouabella. 

' Ibid. * Dated 24 November, 1845. 



138 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The home of Bryan Waller Procter (" Barry Cornwall ") , 
now 114, Harley Street,^ where all the leading literary people 
of the day were to be met from time to time, was also one of 
Browning's constant resorts. Procter, " quiet, unaffected, 
natural, but with a vast deal of hidden fire which breaks 
through his grey tranquil eyes and his placid, simple phrases 
in rather startling flashes " — the description is Joseph 
Arnould's — was two and twenty years Browning's senior. 
He gave him his Poems, also an Italian guide-book when 
Browning set out for Naples in 1844. Mrs. Procter, "one of 
the cleverest and at the same time most sarcastic women in 
London society," was said to be " our Lady of Bitterness ' 
of the preface to Kinglake's Eothen? Kinglake came to 
know her through being, as was also Eliot Warburton of 
Crescent and Cross fame, one of her husband's law pupils. 
Mrs. Procter and Browning were good friends — he used 
regularly to go and see her every Sunday evening during the 
later years of her widowhood ^ — but she thought it a pity he 
" had not seven or eight hours a day of occupation," as her 
husband had, who yet found time to write poetry ; and her 
father, " dear, foolish old Basil Montagu," ^ was of the same 
opinion. Indeed, he went so far as to invite Browning to 
read law with him, with no expense incurred. By precisely 
the same offer, in as kind a spirit, and with as litttle success, 
Arnould tried to lure Domett back from the antipodes. 
Birds of that feather are not snared so easily. 

Browning's earliest visit to Macready's house at Elstree, 
which has been already mentioned, was the first of many. 
Those who frequented it — Forster, the artist Cattermole, Tal- 
fourd, and the rest — came mostly, like himself, from London ; 
but there was at least one of the actor's country neighbours 
with whom he struck up a great friendship. This was Miss 
Euphrasia Fanny Haworth, a lady eleven years his senior, 
who lived with her mother at the Manor House, Barham 
Wood, an Elizabethan dwelling pulled down more than a 
quarter of a century since. Her temperament was romantic, 

• It was then, says Lady Ritchie, 13, Upper Harley Street. 

* Mrs. Crosse's Red Letter Days, vol. ii. p. 177. 
' Procter died in 1874. 

♦ Letters of R, B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 199. 



FRIENDSHIP WITH MISS HAWORTH 139 

as may be inferred from a volume of stories she had published 
in 1827, The Pine Tree Dell and Other Tales, She corre- 
sponded with Browning and is addressed by him at the close 
of the third book of Sordello as "My English Eyebright," 
her first name being the Greek equivalent for that little 
flower supposed long since (it would seem by Milton amongst 
others ^) to " make old eyes young again." Two " Sonnets 
to the author of Paracelsus" which appeared in the New 
Monthly Magazine of September, 1836, are from her pen. 
The first of these, regarded as a contemporary's impression 
of the poet, has a certain value. 

" He hath the quiet calm and look of one 
Who is assur'd in genius too intense 
For doubt of its own power ; yet with the sense 
Of youth, not weakness, — like green fruits in spring, 
Telling rich autumn's promise — tempering . 
All thought of pride ; he knows what he hath done 
Compar'd with the dim thrill of what shall be, 
When glorious visions find reality, 
Is like an echo gone before, — a tone 
When instruments would prove their harmony 
Before the strain begins." 

The future is his, in fact. The second closes in a very 

deprecating fashion. 

" Then, poet, give to me 
No splendour, but one feeling true and kind 
That, if unskill'd wholly to comprehend 
Thy scope of genius — I may call th^Q friend." 

Eleven years later Miss Haworth published a volume of verse, 
St. Sylvesters Day and Other Poems, in which both these 
sonnets, with slightly altered titles {The Young Poet, 1836, and 
To a Poet), are included. A third. To Miss Barrett, on hearing 
of her Secluded Life from Illness, was certainly rather jejune in 
1847, when Miss Barrett had become Mrs. Browning. The 
press was not kind to St. Sylvester's Day, and something in 
the book, perhaps the sonnet to Miss Barrett, seems to have 
offended Browning. "I quite took your view," Mrs. Browning 
writes to her sister-in-law, 

' Paradist Lost, hook xi. 1. 414- 



I40 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

" of the proposed ingratitude to poor Miss Haworth — it would have 
been worse than the sins of Examiner and AthetKZum. If authors 
won't feel for one another, there's an end of the world of writing." ^ 

But Browning's irritation was momentary. His " proposed 
ingratitude," whatever it may have been, never took material 
form ; he made his wife known to Miss Haworth on the first 
opportunity, and the two became great friends. 

It was at Talfourd's house, 56, Russell Square, three years 
after the Ion supper, that Browning first met Mr. John 
Kenyon, a man who was to exercise a remarkable influence 
upon his future. Kenyon, now a widower, was for thirty 
years a prominent figure in London society. He was spoken 
of by Southey as "one of the best and pleasantest men 
whom I have ever known, one whom everybody likes at first 
sight, and likes better the longer he is known." ^ Drawing 
his chair beside Browning's, at the close of dinner, he asked 
him whether he were not the son of a Robert Browning with 
whom he had been at school at Cheshunt. Finding this to 
be the case, he conceived a great liking for the son of his old 
school -fellow, and speedily took out a license for praising 
him, though with reservations. He praised his " inexhaustible 
knowledge and general reasonableness," and contrasted his 
common-sense with his " muddy metaphysical poetry " ! ^ 
His best praise was to declare that Browning "deserved to 
be a poet, being one in heart and life " ; * his best and most 
precious gift the introduction to his second cousin, Miss 
Elizabeth Barrett. 

We may think of Browning, then, during this period, as 
seeing a great deal of society, and sharing its lighter pleasures 
as well as its intellectual interests. How far he cared about 
it, is another matter. Writing to Miss Barrett in 1845, he 
assures her that he " always hated it." " I have put up with 
it these six or seven years past," he tells her, 

" lest by foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, 
in the true time of it, and only discover my fault when too late." ^ 

' Lettns of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, vol. i. p. 322. 

* Red Letter Days, vol. i. p. 122, 

» Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 79. 

* Ibid, p. 267. 

* Ibid. p. 41. 



INTRODUCTION TO MISS BARRETT 141 

The obvious comment is, that if he had shunned society he 
would not have met Kenyon, and so would have probably 
missed the " unknown good." The quest of some such 
felicity leads other men besides poets to mingle with their 
kind, and it is a happy ordinance of nature which impels 
them. But it is an old story that the poet is torn by con- 
flicting impulses, "one drives him to the world without, and 
one to solitude." Browning was no exception to the rule. 
It was his social activity which struck Miss Barrett, when 
first he came into her life, in its almost painful contrast to 
her own loneliness and isolation : — 

" Thou, bethink thee, art 
A guest for queens to social pageantries, 
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes 
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part 
Of chief musician." ^ 

As for him, he had perhaps had enough of society to make 
him desire something more intimate, more satisfying. " What 
I have printed," he wrote to Miss Barrett in the early days of 
their correspondence, 

" gives no knowledge of me — it evidences abilities of various kinds, 
if you will — and a dramatic sympathy with certain modifications of 
passion . . . But I have never begun, even, what I hope I was born 
to begin and end — * R. B., a poem.' " ^ 

That poem, however, was already begun — and we may 
suspect he knew it. 

' Sonnets from the Portuguese, No. III. 

« Letters of R. B. and E. B. B., vol. i. p. 17. 



CHAPTER IX 
MARRIAGE 

Early life of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett — Her disabling illness — Loss of 
her favourite brother — Work her only solace — Her Poems — Browning's 
approbation — Their first meeting — Their correspondence — Rapid growth 
of their attachment — Improvement in Miss Barrett's health — Arbitrary 
conduct of her father— It precipitates their engagement and, subsequently, 
their marriage — They set out for Italy — Their meeting in Paris with 
Mrs. Jameson — Their residence at Pisa — The Sonnets from the 
Portuguese. 

THE year of the death of Wordsworth was the year of 
the publication of In Mevwriam and the Sonnets 
from tlie Portuguese. Each commemorates an ex- 
ceptionally beautiful and helpful love ; and each, singularly 
enough, is associated with Wimpole Street, "the long unlovely 
street " of Tennyson's poem, described by Miss Barrett, so 
close a prisoner there, as looking " like Newgate turned 
inside out." In one "dark house" dwelt Arthur Henry 
Hallam ; another was the home of Elizabeth Barrett during 
the twenty months of that courtship whose story she has 
enshrined in the Sonnets from the Portuguese. 

Browning first met Miss Barrett on 20 May, 1845, and, as 
she herself expressed it, " there was nothing between the 
knowing and the loving." At the age of thirty-nine Miss 
Barrett was already "tired of living . . . unaffectedly tired," 
and felt that her life was practically ended. Seven years 
earlier she had broken a blood-vessel in the lungs, and since 
then had been continuously an invalid. She saw hardly any 
one but the members of her own family, and not even all of 
these together for more than a brief half-hour on Sundays 
All the more remarkable, therefore, is the story of her 
restoration to activity and, in a measure, health, thanks to 
the influence of a great love and a supremely happy marriage. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT'S CHILDHOOD 143 

Six 'years Robert Browning's senior, she was born at 
Coxhoe Hall, near Durham, the home of Mr. Samuel Barrett, 
her father's only brother, to whom she was much indebted ; 
for she benefited by his will to an extent which enabled her 
to take an independent line at the most critical moment of 
her life. The eldest of eleven children, she was the first of 
her family for generations to be born in England ; for her 
father, Edward Moulton Barrett, was connected, as were 
John Kenyon and the Brownings, with the West Indies. 
Looking around him for a house of his own, Mr. Barrett 
pitched his tent in Herefordshire. In that pleasant county, 
four miles west of the Malvern Hills, he built himself a 
many-domed house, which he named Hope End. Hither he 
migrated when his daughter was three years old ; and here 
she spent twenty-three years of her life, in a seclusion so 
complete that she afterwards compared herself to a bird in a 
cage. She was a singing-bird, however. She made rhymes 
over her bread and milk, and copied them out in little 
clasped volumes ; these she would fondle lovingly and take 
with her for a change of air in holiday time. At nine she 
began a series of epics, one of which, Tlie Battle of Marathon, 
survived, for her father had it printed.^ At ten, in her " little 
house under the sideboard," she busied herself with com- 
posing English and French tragedies for representation in 
the nursery. She thought seriously of disguising herself as a 
page, in order to enter the service of Lord Byron, whom she 
adored ; at the same time she could, as she said afterwards, 
" write of Virtue with a V." She had a healthy liking for 
outdoor pleasures, too ; would scamper on Moses, her black 
pony, through the Herefordshire lanes. 

Moses, however, had a serious rival in Pope's Homer ; for 
she dreamt more of Agamemnon, she told Home, than of her 
pony. At the age when Browning played at the siege of Troy 
in the Camberwell drawing-room, Elizabeth Barrett was cutting 
her garden-plot " into a great Hector of Troy, in relievo, with a 

* She was then fourteen years of age. A presentation copy of this work, 
inscribed " A birthday offering to dearest grandmama from her affectionate child, 
Elizabeth, March 6, 1820," was sold at Sotheby's on 17 December, 1908, for;,^8o. 
Browning, as he wrote to Mr. Wise in 18S8, was inclined to doubt its very 
existence, having never seen a copy of it. 



144 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

high heroic box nose and shoe-ties of columbine." The gods 
and goddesses of Hellas became so real to her that she might 
have been seen performing pagan rites to the grey-eyed 
Athen^ with a pinafore-load of sticks and a match from the 
housemaid's cupboard. But Pope's version was not enough ; 
she must read Homer in the original. She set to work on 
Greek, first by herself, then with her brother's tutor, and 
then, which was best, with her friend Hugh Boyd, the blind 
scholar at Malvern, to whom she loved to read aloud. She 
" ate and drank " Greek, and made her head ache over Plato, 
the dramatists, and the early Christian poets. Hebrew too 
she studied, and read her Hebrew Bible from Genesis to 
Malachi, not stopping even at the Chaldee. She was as 
inveterate a reader as Browning himself ; Mr. Kenyon called 
her his "omnivorous cousin." Her father warned her against 
the books " on this side of the library," and she therefore 
avoided the Scylla of Gibbon and Tom Jones, to fall into the 
Charybdis of the other side in the shape of Tom Paine, 
Voltaire, Hume's Essays, Werther, Rousseau, and Mary 
Wollstonecraft, which, she remarked, did quite as well. 
Throughout her life she remained a devotee of fiction, 
devouring " all possible and impossible British and foreign 
novels and romances," and playfully suggesting for her 
epitaph, " Ci-gtt the greatest novel reader in the world." 

Miss Barrett would only allow her mother one fault, that 
of being " too womanly " — in the sense that she was " one of 
those women who can never resist." She herself inherited 
no such failing. She would, if some childish whim were 
crossed, send the books flying across the room and upset the 
chairs and tables. In later life, when principle succeeded 
whim, her passionate championship of any cause she deemed 
right is manifest equally in her poems and in her corre- 
spondence ; while her besetting sin, she explained, was "an 
impatience which makes people laugh when it does not 
entangle their silks, pull their knots tighter, and tear their 
books in cutting them open." Her mother died in 1828; 
then came financial losses, and four years later Hope End 
had to be sold. This was a great blow to Mr. Barrett. He 
was enough a stoic to play cricket with his boys the night 
before they left their home, but he could not bring himself to 




Kl.l/Al'.KIII llARRl-nr liROWMN'i; WHKN A CIRl, 

l-'Kil.M A SKI'MCU HV ME;H SISIICK AKAIlIil.I.A I'.AN'KKl I 



LOSS OF HER FAVOURITE BROTHER 145 

say one word about his reverses. After living three years at 
Sid mouth, in the course of which Miss Barrett published a 
rapidly written translation of Prometheus Boufid, the family 
moved in 1835 to London, occupying there a furnished 
house, 74, Gloucester Place, Baker Street. 

The appearance of The Roma?mt of Margaret in Colburn's 
New Monthly Magazine, in July, 1836, three months after 
Forster's laudatory article on Paracelsus in the same review, 
made Miss Barrett known to the reading public. Chorley's 
admiration has been mentioned. Miss Mitford, soon to become 
her close friend, sought her acquaintance, and took her for a 
drive with Wordsworth ; she met Landor too, and from 
Talfourd, one of Miss Mitford's intimate friends, received a 
copy of the recently acted Ion. Early in 1838 Mr. Barrett 
bought 50, Wimpole Street ; then came his daughter's 
serious illness, the publication of her Seraphim volume — just 
as Browning was visiting Italy for the first time — and her 
removal to Torquay in search of health. Here occurred the 
tragedy which bade fair to wreck her life entirely, the death 
by drowning of her eldest and favourite brother, Edward 
Barrett. He went out boating in Babbacombe Bay, one July 
day in 1840, and never returned. Two years her junior, he 
was the one being whom she then " loved best in the world 
beyond comparison " ; and her grief was heightened by his 
having remained at Torquay to bear her company against 
his father's wish. Fifteen months wore away before the 
invalid, who could hardly be lifted to the sofa without 
fainting, dared undertake the return journey by road to 
London, despite the provision of an easy carriage "with a 
thousand springs." But she longed to attempt it. " The 
associations of this place," she wrote to Mr. Boyd, " lie upon 
me, struggle as I may, like the oppression of a perturbed 
nightmare." The attempt was made ; and in the September 
of 1841 she reached the home which she was not to leave, 
except for a few hours at a time, until her marriage five years 
later. 

Whatever Torquay had done for her lungs, her brother's 
death had shattered, for a time at any rate, her nervous 
system. Sleep would not easily come near her " except in a 
red hood of poppies." Her doctor could only combat the 



146 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

intense restlessness and sense of weakness which oppressed 
her by prescribing opium. In her upper room, however, at 
the back of the house, brotherly hands had done their best to 
disguise all marks of invalidism, and to provide fit lodgment 
for her favourite authors. One shelf was occupied by Greek 
poets and the bust of Homer ; another by English poets and 
the bust of Chaucer. Flush, her devoted spaniel. Miss 
Mitford's gift, nestled beside his mistress on the sofa, and 
proved a valuable help in disposing of dinners and breakfasts 
which were beyond her appetite. Her only solace was 
" work, work, work," an anodyne which nowadays, by the 
way, would in the circumstances probably have been for- 
bidden. Within six months of her return she had begun a 
series of articles in the AtJieticenm on the early Greek 
Christian poets, and it is in connection with these that we 
first begin to associate her name with that of Robert Browning, 
As early as 1841 her cousin had desired to make the 
author of Pippa Passes known to her, but she felt unequal 
to looking on a new face. Next year we find her writing 
to Mr. Boyd that not only did R. H. Home, with whom 
she had for some time corresponded, think well of her 
articles, but that " Mr. Browning the poet was not behind in 
approbation ; " moreover, this " Mr. Browning is said to be 
learned in Greek, especially in the dramatists." During the 
summer a second series of articles appeared, this time on 
the English poets, followed on 27 August by a review of 
Wordsworth's recent volume, at the end of which Browning 
found himself classed with Tennyson among those " high and 
gifted spirits," who, in spite of the low estate into which 
poetry seemed to have fallen, '* would still work and wait." 
Early in 1843, when the critics were assailing A Blot in the 
* Scutcheon, her private letters reveal her sympathy with the 
author ; a little later she confessed to having been made 
quite misanthropical by her valued Athencenni s review of the 
Drajnatic Lyrics, and declared that " it is easier to find a 
more faultless writer than a poet of equal genius." Great, 
then, must have been her delight when the admired writer 
was found approving her poetry as heartily as he had 
approved her critical work. She had sent Kenyon the 
manuscript of her Dead Pan, a poem suggested by some lines 



RECEPTION OF HER "POEMS" 147 

of his own, and he thereupon " chaperoned it about wherever 
his kindness could reach." Of course it reached Browning — 
Kenyon often spoke to him of his cousin — and he expressed 
his approbation in such cordial terms that Kenyon sent the 
letter to Wimpole Street. Miss Barrett retained the note as 
an autograph, and soon afterwards forwarded it to Home, 
who had criticized the Dead Pan, that he might see the 
appreciative opinion of a poet "whom they both admired." 
During the autumn Browning and Miss Barrett, though 
neither knew it, were co-workers ; for both were occupied in 
helping Home to choose mottoes for the sketches of those 
writers whom he was about to include in his New Spirit of 
the Age. When, in the February following, this work 
appeared. Home sent Miss Barrett copies of the eight por- 
traits it contained ; and she forthwith had framed for her 
room those of Carlyle, Wordsworth, Harriet Martineau, 
Tennyson, and Browning. She asked her cousin if Brown- 
ing's portrait were a good one ? " Rather like," was all that 
could conscientiously be said. 

The next link to be forged in the invisible chain which 
was to bind these two together was the appearance of her 
Poems in the summer of 1844, just as Browning was starting 
on his second Italian journey. On his return in December 
the volumes fell into his hands, and he found mention of his 
own work, side by side with that of Tennyson and Words- 
worth. " Or from Browning," run the lines, 

" Or from Browning some pomegranate which, if cut deep down 
the middle, 
Shews a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity." 

He would have been less than human had he not been 
gratified. The Poe?ns had a great reception. Readers, 
known and unknown to her, wrote to thank their author ; 
among others Mrs. Jameson, hitherto a stranger, who actually 
gained admittance to the invahd's room. Miss Martineau, 
Talfourd, Landor, and Carlyle. Should not Browning write 
too ? Kenyon said emphatically, " Yes." So it was that on 
the 10 January, 1845, Miss Barrett received her first letter 
from Robert Browning — the first letter of a wonderful and 
unparalleled correspondence, for in no other age were such a 



148 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

pair of poets lovers too. Browning begins with characteristic 
impetuosity : — " I love your verses with all my heart, dear 
Miss Barrett." We may trace their story for ourselves in the 
successive letters, not without a sense, as we do so, of intrud- 
ing upon hallowed ground. But our emotions, as we read, 
are purified and ennobled ; for which cause, let us hope, our 
trespass is forgiven. 

To Miss Barrett, Browning's praise outweighed the rest. 
" I had a letter from Browning the poet last night," she writes 
to a friend, "which threw me into ecstasies — Browning the 
author of Paracelsus, and king of the mystics." The 
intimacy, conducted on paper, grew apace. " I had rather 
hear from you," he wrote to her a month later, " than see 
anybody else." She promised to receive him when spring 
came — "winters shut me up as they do dormouse's eyes" — 
and they met for the first time towards the end of May. 
Over a score of letters had already passed between them, and 
Miss Barrett afterwards confessed that she had read and 
re-read each one that she received, and that when Browning 
came " he never went away again." For his part, his resolve 
was quickly taken. Though he supposed, when first he saw 
her, that she would never be able so much as to stand upon 
her feet before him, he determined to devote his life to hers. 
The letter which he wrote after their first meeting — the only 
one afterwards destroyed — was virtually the confession of a 
love which Miss Barrett did not then believe that it could be 
right for her to accept. Her youth was past, she felt, and 
her health broken ; she " had not strength, even of heart, for 
the ordinary duties of life." The subject, consequently, was 
forbidden ; but the friendship deepened. The visits con- 
tinued once, occasionally even twice a week, while the 
letters " rained down more and more " ; and, as the months 
passed, events occurred by which the two friends were 
insensibly drawn nearer. Miss Barrett grew stronger. 
During July she was able to exchange the sofa for the arm- 
chair, to walk about the room with something of the un- 
certainty of a young child, and to drive out two or three 
times a week. She planned a visit to Kenyon in Regent's 
Park, and even hoped to reach Mr. Boyd's house in St. John's 
Wood. That this Improvement might not be lost, her family 



A DIFFICULT COURTSHIP 149 

began to discuss the advisability of her wintering in Malta or 
in Egypt ; while her doctor recommended Pisa, then a 
recognized resort for invalids. 

Browning, who joined eagerly in the inquiries about 
vessels and cabins, had hitherto only known Mr. Barrett 
from the dedication of his daughter's recently published 
Poems : he was now to discover something else in that 
" beloved image " beside the parental smile and the tender 
affection of which this dedication spoke. During the family 
councils Mr, Barrett maintained a dead silence. From 
such attitude disapproval might naturally be inferred ; and, 
presumably in order to remove all doubt upon the point, 
he withdrew his countenance from his favourite daughter. 
His little kindnesses and his daily visits to her room were 
discontinued. October came, and Miss Barrett had by this 
time decided to go to Pisa without her father's consent, 
should it still be withheld. A last effort was made to obtain 
it. Her brother George undertook to intercede for her, and 
pressed the matter home. Then the oracle spoke : his 
daughter might go, if she pleased, " but that going it would 
be under his heaviest displeasure." This she might have 
braved ; but others were involved. She would not go alone, 
and a brother and sister were ready to accompany her. She 
rightly shrank from bringing Mr. Barrett's wrath upon their 
heads also, and consequently the much-debated project was 
finally renounced. " The bitterest part of all," she wrote to 
Browning, " is that I believed Papa to have loved me more 
than he obviously does." In proportion as the breach with 
her father widened, it was almost inevitable that the bonds 
between the friends should be drawn closer. By the end of 
September Browning had become more than a friend, he was 
an acknowledged lover. " Henceforward," wrote Miss Barrett, 
" I am yours for everything but to do you harm. It rests 
with God and with you — only in the meanwhile you are most 
absolutely free, unentangled, as they call it, by the breadth of 
a thread." 

This avowal was one thing, the possibility of marriage 
was another. Happily the winter proved abnormally mild, 
and Miss Barrett steadily gained ground. The regular visits 
went on, and Browning's flowers were continually upon her 



150 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

table. Her sisters, Henrietta and Arabel, now shared her 
secret ; her brothers became discreetly suspicious. Kenyon 
periodically made her uncomfortable by staring at her 
through his spectacles and asking pointed questions ; but he 
knew Browning as "an incarnation of the good and true," and 
he also knew what he termed the " monomania " of his cousin 
and quondam college friend, Edward Moulton Barrett. At 
50, Wimpole Street marriage was a forbidden subject. 
Browning, who detested underhand methods, had to be 
convinced that it would be worse that useless to ask for Mr. 
Barrett's consent. " If a Prince of Eldorado should come," 
Miss Barrett once remarked to her sister, " with a pedigree of 
lineal descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, 
and a ticket of good behaviour from the nearest Independent 

Chapel in the other ■ " (for Mr. Barrett was a staunch 

Nonconformist) — " Why, even then" said Arabel, " it would 
not do" " You might as well think," Miss Barrett assured her 
lover, "to sweep off a third of the stars of heaven with the 
motion of your eyelashes. He would rather see me dead at 
his feet than yield the point ; he will say so and mean it, and 
persist in the meaning." 

It was obvious, therefore, that they must take the matter 
into their own hands. Thanks mainly to the substantial 
manner in which her uncle's affection had expressed itself, 
Miss Barrett did not depend on her father for support. With 
£ZoQO in the funds, yielding about .^300 a year, besides other 
sums, she could act for herself; while both she and Browning 
were confident that they could earn money, should they need 
it. Another mild winter could not reasonably be expected. 
They determined to marry and set out for Italy before the 
close of autumn. As the summer of 1846 came on, Miss 
Barrett began to make the best use of her increasing physical 
powers. In May she was in Regent's Park, standing on the 
grass for the first time for years, plucking laburnum ; soon 
she was in the Botanical gardens, rejoicing in the beauty of 
" the green under the green — where the grass stretches under 
trees " ; another day she was at Hampstead, gathering wild 
roses from the hedges. Or she would drive to Highgate, and 
along the silent lanes near Harrow ; or to Finchley, to call 
upon a son of Lamartine. She paid visits to Kenyon and 



HIS MARRIAGE 151 

Boyd ; she accompanied Mrs. Jameson, now an intimate 
friend, to see Rogers' house in St. James's Place ; she went 
to hear the music at Westminster Abbey and attended 
service at Paddington Congregational Church ; she con- 
templated a visit to the Brownings at Hatcham ; she tried 
her powers by occasional walks in Wimpole Street, with 
Flush at her heels, to rescue whom from the dog-stealers she 
drove through the noisy streets to Shoreditch. Early in 
August she could write, " I am as well at this moment as 
any one in the world — perfectly well, I am. At the same 
time, strong is different. But the health is unaffected." 

The taking of the all-important step was unexpectedly 
precipitated. In September a sudden edict went forth that 
the house in Wimpole Street should be painted and 
repaired, and that George Barrett should set out next day to 
secure a house for a month at Dover, Reigate or Tonbridge. 
The risk to Miss Barrett's health of such a removal and of 
the return to a freshly painted house at the beginning of the 
cold season was obvious, and too great to take. The project, 
it appeared to Browning, would infallibly delay the marriage 
for another year. He at once wrote to Miss Barrett, " We 
must be married directly and go to Italy." He discussed the 
situation with his parents, and his father advanced him one 
hundred pounds for travelling expenses. Miss Barrett, for 
fear of compromising her brothers and sisters, told none of 
them what was impending ; not even Kenyon was taken into 
her confidence, and he proved grateful for the considera- 
tion shown him. Browning's decision had been taken on 
10 September, and the marriage was fixed for two days later. 
Between ten and eleven on the morning of Saturday, 12 Sep- 
tember, Miss Barrett left her home, accompanied by her 
faithful maid Wilson, in what state of perturbation may be 
imagined, and managed to reach St. Marylebone Church, 
though obliged to stop at a chemist's for sal volatile on the 
way. The only witnesses were Wilson and James Silver- 
thorne, the bridegroom's cousin ; no wedding could have been 
quieter. " How necessity makes heroes — or heroines, at 
least," wrote the bride. After sending Wilson home to ask 
her sisters to follow her, she drove to Mr. Boyd's house ; there 
rested on the sofa and drank a little Cyprus wine ; then, when 



!52 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

her anxious sisters arrived, drove with them out of bravado 
to Hampstead, but felt a mist come over her eyes as she 
passed St. Marylebone's on her way home. 

Browning could no longer call at Wimpole Street and ask 
for his wife as " Miss Barrett," but events moved so quickly 
that his absence was not remarked. Five days after the 
marriage another decree went forth ; a house had been 
secured at Little Bookham, and the Barretts were to move 
on the following Monday. On the afternoon of Saturday, 
19 September, Mrs. Browning and her maid, accompanied by 
Flush, who judiciously kept silence, quietly stole out of doors. 
Walking round the corner to Hodgson's, the bookseller's, in 
Great Marylebone Street, they found Browning waiting for 
them. A cab was called from the neighbouring and still 
existing cab rank. The quartet of fugitives drove to Nine 
Elms, Vauxhall, and left by the five o'clock train for 
Southampton, on the first stage of their momentous journey. 
Italy, freedom, and untrammelled happiness — at last the 
dream was to be realized. 

Twenty-two and a half hours of travel at that time 
separated London from Paris, for the railway from Havre to 
Rouen was not completed ; but Mrs. Browning bore up 
wonderfully against the inevitable fatigue. At Paris her 
husband at once found out Mrs. Jameson, who had preceded 
them thither, and she welcomed with amazement the friends 
whom she described as " two celebrities who have run away 
and married under circumstances peculiarly interesting and 
such as render imprudence the height of prudence." Brown- 
ing was thankful for the presence of a woman friend, for he 
naturally feared lest his wife should suffer from the effects of 
the long journey and from the grief of the separation from 
her family in such painful fashion, unavoidable though it was. 
Mrs. Jameson thought her "looking horribly ill" at first, and 
the Brownings were persuaded to rest a week in Paris, on the 
understanding that she would then accompany them to Pisa. 
Accordingly they joined her at the little Hotel de la Ville in 
the Rue d'Eveque, where she was staying with her niece, 
later her biographer, Miss Geraldine Bate ; from whence the 
whole party moved southward towards Italy. 

From Paris to Orleans the high-road was, as the Murray 



THE JOURNEY SOUTHWARD 153 

of those days remarked, *' superseded by the railroad " ; 
and from Orleans the way was made easy by steamers 
on the Loire, the Saone and the Rhone. After eleven 
hours on the boat from Lyons they landed at Avignon 
and drove to Vaucluse, where Petrarch sought seclusion, as 
devotees of poetry should. Here, when Browning seated 
his wife on a rock in the middle of the stream, the anxious 
Flush plunged from the bank, prepared to perish with his 
loved mistress, and so was baptised, as she put it, in the name 
of Petrarch ! From Marseilles they went by sea to Leghorn, 
and Mrs. Browning sat spell-bound on deck as they coasted 
along the Riviera, watching the mountains rising tier above tier. 
At Genoa Browning was on familiar ground — France he had 
not previously traversed — for it was but two years since he 
had visited the last Italian home of Byron, the city whence 
he had sailed to take part in the struggle for Hellenic freedom. 
Thence they coasted southward, past the Gulf of Spezzia, in 
the heart of which lies Lerici, Shelley's last home, and past 
Viareggio, with its background of pine-woods and mountains, 
where his body had been washed ashore. So presently 
Leghorn was reached ; and as they entered its harbour a 
reminder of home appeared in the person of Father Prout, 
that wandering man of letters whom most people know 
to-day, if they know him at all, as the author of The Bells 
of Shandon, now discerned standing upon a rock and gazing 
out to sea. 

Pisa was distant but a dozen miles by rail — "poor, 
decrepit old Pisa," as Frances Power Cobbe termed it, " the 
Bath of Italy," where people talked of their coughs and read 
newspapers a week old. Pisa pesa a chi posa} says the pro- 
verb ; but it was not so with one set of travellers. To Mrs. 
Browning everything was new and delightful ; Pisa seemed 
the fit ending to a happy pilgrimage. It was a delight and 
a wonder to bask in warm December sunshine, to walk forth 
and watch the lizards darting to and fro, and see the golden 
oranges overhang the walls ; to think of their friend Home 
as they passed the statue of Cosimo de Medici in the little 
piazza by the Tower of Famine ; of Byron as they passed the 
Lanfranchi Palace on the Arno, where he and his motley 

' " Pisa weighs heavily on those who stop there." 



154 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

household had dwelt, and where Leigh Hunt had been a 
sojourner ; or of Shelley and his Epipsychidion, as their gaze fell 
on the neighbouring Convent of Santa Anna, where Emilia 
Viviani had been " imprisoned." It was a joy to drive across 
the plain to the Mediterranean ; to visit the pine-woods where 
Shelley loved to wander, to look upon the Serchio stream 
where he had sailed in his boat ; or to drive to the neigh- 
bouring range of hills at whose foot the little Baths of San 
Giuliano nestled, where he heard the news of the death of 
Keats and wrote the Adonais. It was a delight to sit in the 
upper rooms of the large CoUegio Ferdinando, their home 
for six months, and look out upon the adjoining Duomo with 
its many-pillared front, the Leaning Tower, the Baptistery 
with its famous pulpit, and the peaceful Campo Santo with 
its curious frescoes. To enjoy all this, and to enjoy it in 
the company of the chosen and tried friend of her heart, 
seemed to Mrs. Browning, after years of weakness and isola- 
tion, almost to transcend reality. Never before, she felt, had 
she truly known happiness. Her health also, as Mrs. Jameson 
declared, was not only " improved but transformed " ; the 
services of Flush were no longer needed for the disposal of 
dinners and suppers, although he remained a guest when the 
midday meal was sent in from the Trattoria^ and when 
chestnuts and grapes made their appearance in the evening. 
At the end of six weeks Mrs. Jameson and her niece went 
away, and the Pisan life became " a perpetual tete-a-tete^,* in 
which one episode at least must be recorded. One morning, 
early in 1847, Mrs. Browning stole quietly after breakfast into 
the room where her husband worked, thrust some manuscript 
into his pocket, and then hastily withdrew. He found it to 
contain the Sonnets from the Portuguese, composed during 
their courtship and engagement, and now seen by him for the 
first time. To him they appeared to be " the finest sonnets 
written in any language since Shakespeare's." By Miss 
Mitford's help they were privately printed at Reading this 
same year as "Sonnets by E. B. B.," and three years later 
were given to the public under their present name, a title 
suggested to Browning by his wife's poem Catarina to 
Camoens, of which he was particularly fond. 

The prisoner of Chillon, we are told, " regained his freedom 



A PERFECT UNION 155 

with a sigh." As much may be said, with a difference, of 
Mrs. Browning. Her sighs were all for her father's unrelent- 
ing temper. Neither then nor later did he forgive his 
daughter. She wrote repeatedly to him, but no reply was 
vouchsafed. Five years later, being on a visit to London with 
her husband and her child, she made a final and ineffectual 
appeal. Browning also wrote. To him a violent answer was 
returned, accompanied by all the letters which his wife had 
written, unopened and with the seals unbroken. There is no 
need to say more upon this painful topic. Mrs. Browning 
had counted the cost of her action, and was not unprepared 
for its results. What she gained was immeasurably greater 
than what she lost. " By to-morrow at this time," she had 
written to her husband, the night before they left London, " I 
shall have you only, to love me. . . . You otily ! As if one 
said God only. And we shall have Him beside, I pray of 
Him." Her choice was triumphantly vindicated ; and the 
letters which she wrote to her friends during the remainder of 
her life are the best and most illuminative comment on these 
impassioned and most touching words. 



CHAPTER X 
EARLY YEARS IN FLORENCE 

The era of the Rlsori^imcnio — Pio Nono — English society in Florence 
— American acquaintances : Powers, G. W. Curtis — Visit to Vallombrosa 
— Mary Boyle — G. S. Hillard — Father Prout— The revolutionary year — 
The Brownings' home at Casa Guidi — Visit to Fano and Ancona — 
Guercino's " Guardian Angel "—Browning's illness — W. W. Story — Birth 
of the Brownings' son — Revolution in Florence — Defeat of Charles Albert 
at Novara — Consequent reaction — Death of Browning's mother — Visit to 
the Baths of Lucca — Margaret Fuller Ossoli— Isa Blagden- C/zr/j/w/^w 
Eve and Edstcr Day — Illness of Mrs. Browning — Visit to Siena— Home- 
ward journey — Meeting with Tennyson in Paris — Return to England. 

IT had been the Brownings' original design simply to 
winter in Italy ; but as Mrs. Browning's father was 
implacable, and her brothers, though later they became 
fully reconciled to her marriage, at present disapproved it, 
an early return to England promised little happiness. Con- 
sequently, they decided to remain abroad " for another year 
if not longer." The early spring of 1847 found them still at 
Pisa ; but in April they set out by diligence for Florence, 
the city which was destined to be their home, or at least 
their head-quarters, for the next fourteen years. 

When they first set foot in the Tuscan capital, they con- 
templated no such possibility. Indeed, Mrs. Browning had 
been warned against its cold winter winds. But they were 
under an engagement to spend some time there with Mrs. 
Jameson, after which they intended to devote the summer to 
wanderings in Northern Italy. A furnished apartment was 
taken in the Via delle Belle Donne, close to the Piazza Santa 
Maria Novella, Here, three days after their arrival, they 
were joined by Mrs. Jameson, who had been staying in 
Rome. She was, indeed, a day before her time ; for she had 



PIO NONO'S FAIR PROMISE 157 

remembered that Shakespeare's birthday was at hand, and 
brought with her from Arezzo a bottle of wine '* to drink to 
his memory with two other poets." She talked of recent 
visitants to Rome ; of Cobden, who was determined " to try 
to admire Michael Angelo " ; of O'Connell, seemingly come 
there to die ; of the artists, Gibson and Wyatt ; above all, of 
the new Pope, Pio Nono, who, as Father Prout expressed it,^ 
seemed to have brought back the golden days of Haroun al 
Raschid. 

The Brownings, indeed, could hardly have come to Italy at 
a more momentous period of her history. The Austrian flag 
still flew in Lombardy and Venetia ; Mazzini was an exile ; 
Ferdinand II., though he had not yet earned the odious 
sobriquet of Bomba, was the oppressor of the Two Sicilies ; 
but Cavour's pen was already being plied on behalf of Italian 
unity, and Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, who needed only 
more tenacity of purpose to make him an heroic as well as 
a pathetic figure, had already given unmistakable signs of 
hatred of Austria and of liberal inclinations. It was at this 
juncture that Giovanni Mastai Ferretti was called upon to 
fill the throne of Saint Peter, under the title of Pius IX., in 
succession to a Pope who for fifteen years had carried on the 
tradition of mis-government so long associated with the 
Papal States ; and from this most unexpected quarter came 
the first flash of light. Pio Nono was a kindly, well-meaning 
man, though his mental gifts were not on the same level as 
his good intentions. His first proceedings were admirable ; 
he granted a general amnesty to political prisoners, considered 
the possibility of allowing railways to be made in his 
dominions, and called laymen to his councils. This, as it 
afterwards appeared, was as far as he desired to go ; but 
during the first year of his rule he seemed to his countrymen 
the ideal pontiff of the Neo-Guelph party, the destined 
regenerator of Italy. Browning shared the general admira- 
tion. While still at Pisa, when it was thought that before 
the year was out England would send a minister to Rome, 
he had written to Monckton Milnes " that he would be glad 
and proud to be secretary to such an embassy and to work 

' In one of bis letters to the Daily News, subsequently reprinted under the title 
Facts aiul Figures from Italy. 



158 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

like a horse " for it* No mission was sent ; but the offer is 
illustrative of Browning's attitude towards the rising hopes of 
Italy. He and his wife were to witness the fall of those 
large hopes, their resurrection, and, in part at least, their 
triumph. The cause of Italian liberty had their heartfelt 
sympathy, as it had that of the majority of their countrymen. 
But while it moved Mrs. Browning to the writing of much 
verse, of which Casa Giiidi Windoivs was the first instalment, 
only occasional echoes of it are perceptible in Robert Brown- 
ing's poetry. There is, indeed, the earlier written Italian in 
England ; and to have composed that heart-stirring monologue 
is in itself a noble tribute to a great cause and a great people. 
But outside of this it is impossible to name any poem, unless 
it be TJie Patriot, which can have been directly inspired by 
the events of the risorgimento. A second time, therefore, we 
are confronted with the fact that Browning abstained, on 
principle, from making contemporary political events the 
subject of his verse. Mrs. Browning's way was different. 
She could not watch in silence, as her husband could. Her 
emotions drove her into lyric utterances, not always judicious, 
perhaps, but always sincere ; and thus she forged at fever 
heat that 

" rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) 
Linking our England to his Italy." ^ 

Browning had an exalted opinion of his wife's poetic genius ; 
he honestly believed her possessed of more of the divine 
afflatus than had fallen to his own lot ; and in view of this 
belief it is permissible, if another reason for his keeping 
silence " even from good words " be needed, to suggest that 
he deliberately chose not to intrude upon a field which she 
was making peculiarly her own. There are some lines from 
Tennyson which do not seem too high-pitched to express 
what he may have felt, both in these early days of wedded 
happiness and later : 

" Thou from a throne 
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark 
Arrows of lightning. I will stand and mark." ^ 

' Moficktcn Milties, Lord Houghton, by T. Wemyss Reid, vol. i. pp. 384-5. 
- The concluding lines of The Ring and the Book. 
= Early Sonnets, II., To J. M. K. 



THE BROWNINGS IN FLORENCE 159 

Tuscany was among the first of the ItaHan provinces in 
its enthusiasm for the new Pope's measures. The Brownings 
had early evidence of the feelings of the Florentines, who 
made Cobden's passing through their city an excuse for 
a liberal demonstration. Revolution was to come more 
gently than elsewhere, however, upon Florence, whose in- 
habitants were of an easy-going disposition, and had less 
substantial causes for complaint than many of their neigh- 
bours. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II., though 
an autocrat, was a lenient one ; a kindly if dull individual, 
whom his people liked well enough, though jokingly calling 
him their Gran Chinco, or " great donkey." He lacked, at 
any rate, the obstinacy commonly associated with that animal ; 
for, observing the temper of his subjects, he mitigated the 
severity of the press censorship, with the immediate result of 
the freer spreading of liberal ideas in his capital and in 
Pisa and Leghorn. This was the chief political event during 
the early days of the Brownings' stay in Florence. 

They lingered there, long after Mrs. Jameson's departure 
for England. Mrs. Browning had to see the wonders of the 
place gradually, as her health allowed. " I have seen the 
Venus," she writes, " I have seen the divine Raphaels. I 
have stood by Michael Angelo's tomb in Santa Croce. I 
have looked at the wonderful Duomo. ... At Pisa we say, 
' How beautiful ! ' here we say nothing ; it is enough if we 
can breathe." Florence fascinated them, and they were in no 
haste to break its spell. They continued to lead the secluded 
life which they had begun at Pisa. The resident English 
were in the main " worth very little consideration," declared 
one of Mrs. Browning's friends ; " frivolous, gay, giddy, and 
it must be owned for the most part not very intellectual," 
was the description of another. Charles Lever roundly 
declared that Florence was a city cursed by the presence of 
"a miserably mended class of small English." Their dances, 
their card parties, their private theatricals in the Cocomero 
theatre, and their picnics had little attraction for the Brown- 
ings, who courteously but resolutely held aloof — "struggled 
to keep out of it with hands and feet," as Mrs. Browning put 
it, till it came to be recognized that they desired to be left 
alone, and that " nothing could be made of us." They had 



i6o THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

not come abroad in search of society of this kind ; nor such 

as was to be found at the motley gatherings in the Pitti 

Palace, where the Grand Duke held every week what he 
called "the worst drawing-room in Europe." 

"The tag-rag and bobtail of the men who mainly constituted 
that very pleasant but not very intellectual society," wrote Thomas 
Adolphus TroUope, " were not likely to be such as Mr. Browning 
would readily make intimates of. And I think I see in memory's 
tragic glass that the men used to be ratlier afraid of him. Not that 
I ever saw him rough or uncourteous to the most exasperating fool 
. . . but there was a quiet lurking smile, which, supported by very 
few words, used to seem to have the singular property of making 
utterers of platitudes and the mistakes of 7ion scquitur for sequitur 
uncomfortably aware of the nature of their words within a very few 
minutes after they had uttered them." ^ 

Nor was the lack of culture all. After four years in Florence 
Mrs. Browning described the society there as " worse than 
any coterie society in the world . . . people come together 
to gamble or dance, if there's an end, why, so much the 
better ; but there's 7iot an end in most cases, by any manner 
of means and against every sort of innocence." Their chief 
associates, therefore, for some years at least, were mostly 
strangers, usually cultivated Americans, among whom Mrs. 
Browning's writings were exceedingly popular, and among 
whom also her husband was appreciated long before his 
poetry found general acceptance in England. 

Within three weeks of their arrival one young American 
had found them out. This was Hiram Powers, then a rising 
sculptor, whose " Greek Slave " was presently to win him an 
international reputation. He had already lived ten years in 
Florence. Browning had visited his studio ofif the Via 
Romana, as was the manner of most English and American 
travellers, and a young American journalist, G. W. Curtis, 
happening to see his card, revealed to the sculptor that he 
had been entertaining angels unawares. Powers had much 
to recommend him besides his art. He was an unassuming 
man, but shrewd and quietly humorous ; something of a 
mystic too, with a devotion to Swedenborg which was later 

' What 1 Remember y p. 190. 



AT VALLOMBROSA i6i 

to be transferred to spiritualism. He professed a belief in 
phrenology, and declared that Mrs. Browning's organ of 
ideality was larger than her husband's. What he said about the 
latter's capacity for veneration has been already mentioned.^ 

Curtis, also, was a man worth knowing. He wrote and 
begged for Browning's acquaintance. In response Browning 
called upon him, advised him not to read Soniello, and invited 
him to tea. Three years earlier Curtis had been a member 
of that clever socialistic community at Brook Farm, where 
even " the weeds were scratched out of the ground to the 
music of Tennyson or Browning," a community visited by 
Emerson and by Margaret Fuller, who was something of a 
Sibyl. He had also belonged to a club at Concord, which 
used to meet in Emerson's library, and had known Nathaniel 
Hawthorne and Thoreau. With these credentials he was 
soon admitted to the Brownings' intimacy. When July came 
and they left Florence, " thoroughly burned out by the sun," 
intending to pass two or three months at the monastery of 
Vallombrosa, to whose abbot they had a letter of recommen- 
dation, he was also of the party. In that upland valley, 

" where the Etrurian shades 
High over-arched imbower," 

they counted upon finding both rest and coolness. Starting 
at four in the morning, they drove thirteen miles along the 
valley of the Arno to Pelago, and then Mrs. Browning had 
to endure five hours' jolting, as the white oxen slowly dragged 
her sledge-like, basket troggia up the four miles of steep and 
stony pathway to the convent. But the abbot disapproved 
of womankind, in the shape of Mrs. Browning and her maid. 
The fare, too, was so rough that they seemed likely to have 
to live upon the scenery. The abbot was the deciding factor, 
and after five days they had to leave. So they went back to 
Florence, *' very merrily for disappointed people." Curtis 
long afterwards recalled how he had listened to Gregorian 
chants and a hymn by Pergolese, as Browning sat and played 
upon the organ of the monastery chapel, upon which it is 
believed that Milton played two hundred years before. 

' Supra, p. 50. 
M 



i62 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Their old apartment now proving untenable owing to the 
heat, comparatively cool quarters were obtained on the first 
floor of Casa Guidi, south of the Arno, at the corner of the 
Via Maggio and the Via Mazetta. Here they were hunted 
up by Miss Mary Boyle, Lord Cork's niece, a vivacious lady, 
the friend of many authors and herself a writer.^ She and her 
mother and sister were staying at the Villa Careggi, outside 
Florence, lent to them by Lord Holland, a noble dwelling 
whose wide gardens and wealth of marble were fit reminders 
of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Miss Boyle, of whom Landor 
declared that "Mary is more than clever, she is profound," 
was soon on intimate terms with the tenants of Casa Guidi. 
She was present with them at the next act of the Florentine 
political drama, when in September the whole party, Flush 
included, watched a great procession stream past their 
windows to the Pitti Palace opposite. The Grand Duke had 
granted a civic guard, and his people assembled in thousands 
to express their thanks. It was a scene of wild excitement, of 
shouting, tears, and embraces. 

Increasingly satisfied with Florence, the Brownings deter- 
mined to make the experiment of passing the winter there. 
In October they moved to other furnished rooms, in the 
Piazza Pitti, where the maximum of sunshine was to be had ; 
" small yellow rooms," Mrs. Browning calls them, " with sun- 
shine from morning to evening." Here the weeks succeeded 
one another so rapidly that they were constrained to " wonder 
at the clock for galloping." They read, made music, talked 
much and wrote a little. On festa days the civic guard 
paraded in the Piazza in all the glory of their new helmets 
and epaulettes, till Browning caught himself asking, " Surely, 
after all this, they would use those muskets "i " In the day- 
time Flush was the companion of his walks, but not even a 
concert or the chance of seeing Alfieri acted could entice him 
from his home in the evening. There lay his happiness, a 
great and an increasing one. But Miss Boyle was a 
privileged intruder, coming constantly at night to join the 
poets over hot chestnuts and mulled wine, when talk was 
good and laughter plentiful. 

» She embodied her reminiscences in a pleasant volume, Mary Boyle^ Her Book, 
published in 1901. 




CASA i;UIDl, FROM THK I'lTTl PAI.ACK 

THIS SHOWS THE ENTRANCE, ON THE VIA MAf.GIO. nUOWNINGS ROOMS WERE ON THE FIRST 
FLOOR, JUST OVER THE TABLET, DEDICATED IIY " liRATEI'LL FLORENCE" TO MRS. BROWNING'S 
MEMORY. THE HOUSE IS ON TWO STREETS, AND ALL liROWNINC's ROOMS BUT ONE ARE ON 

THE OTHER STREET 



THE REVOLUTIONARY YEAR 163 

It was in these rooms, too, that they received a visit from 
George Stillman Hillard, an American writer, who had 
reviewed Mrs. Browning's poems and wished to know their 
author. In his Six Months in Italy he has left a brief sketch 
of husband and wife, Browning "simple, natural, playful," 
Mrs. Browning all genius and sensibility. " Her tremulous 
voice," he writes, 

" often flutters over her words like the flame of a dying candle over 
the wick. I have never seen a human frame which seemed so 
nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit." 

Another passing visitor from the outside world was Father 
Prout, who had just completed his letters from Italy to the 
recently established Daily News. Meeting him accidentally, 
Browning had his latest impressions of Pio Nono, as well 
as news of Mrs. Jameson and her niece, and at the end 
of all was embraced " in the open street as the speaker 
was about to disappear in the diligence." Yet another 
visitor was a newly married cousin of Mrs. Browning, who 
exclaimed in amazement at her look of improved health. 
Being too happy, however, as she wrote to Miss Mitford, was 
not conducive to literary activity ; and whatever Browning 
meditated, he did not produce anything new, contenting 
himself during this winter with the revision of his already 
published poems. 

From this occupation, perhaps, or from reading the Andri 
of George Sand, whose works they both admired, they were 
startled late one evening by the tramp of many feet and the 
sound of loud " evvivas," while " through the dark night a 
great flock of stars seemed sweeping up the piazza." The 
Grand Duke had made another concession to his people, 
nothing less important, this time, than the granting of a 
constitution. He had gone to the opera unattended, but was 
recognized, hailed with acclamations, and escorted home in 
torchlight procession by a multitude of his subjects. The 
revolutionary year had dawned. January, 1848, saw Sicily in 
revolt and Ferdinand II. granting a constitution ; Charles 
Albert, Leopold II. and Pio Nono shortly followed suit. 
Simultaneously the idea of an united Italy gathered strength. 
The Austrians were driven out cf Milan after hard fisfhtine : 



i64 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Venice was evacuated ; Charles Albert put himself at the 
head of the national movement ; and even Leopold urged his 
subjects to join "the holy cause of independence." From 
Paris came more sinister tidings ; the news that Louis 
Philippe had fled, and that a Republic was proclaimed, was 
whispered in Florentine ballrooms and cast a gloom over the 
dancers. A new acquaintance of the Brownings, Mademoiselle 
de Fauveau, a sculptor, had suffered exile for her legitimist 
opinions ; now she dreamt that " Henri Cinq " would come to 
his own. Among the English residents there was something 
like a panic ; a large proportion of them made haste to 
leave Florence, a circumstance which the more inclined the 
Brownings to remain. So it was that when in May an 
opportunity offered of securing the flat in Casa Guidi which 
they had already occupied, they decided, inclination and 
economy being for once on the same side, to take it, furnish 
it, and make it their definite abode. 

Tuscany, however tumultuous, was at that time a little 
Goshen. Taxes were light and expenses so small that 
Florence was perhaps the cheapest place in Italy. Sixpence 
would purchase a goodly fowl or a flask — equivalent to three 
bottles — of capital Chianti. These were the days when " for 
three hundred a year," wrote Mrs. Browning, " one may live 
much like the Grand Duchess, and go to the opera in the 
evening at fivepence halfpenny." Her friends. Miss Blagden 
and Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who kept house together for a 
time, managed even more economically : their fourteen rooms 
in the Villa Brichieri, finely situated on the slopes of Bellos- 
guardo — which suggested the villa described by Mrs. Brown- 
ing in Aurora Leigh ^ — with a man-servant and a maid, and 
a carriage and pair when they drove into the city, cost them, 
all told, but £120 a year each. At Casa Guidi seven rooms, 
three of them "quite palace rooms and opening on a terrace," 
the favourite suite of the last Count Guidi, whose arms were 
on the scagliola in one of them, were rented at only twenty- 
five guineas a year ; and could be let furnished, should their 
occupants wish to travel, for some ten pounds a month. 

The sale of their poems during the last two years — chiefly 

* According to Miss F. P. Cobbe's statement in her Italics. "Not exactly 
Aurora Leigh's, mind," wrote Mrs. Browning to Mrs. Jameson. 



CASA GUIDI AND FELICE CHURCH 

. V.HW A,.C.NO THE VIA M.W.ETTA-rEX.,CE CHU-H O. X„E LEPT CA^A OU,D. ON TH, ,,o„x 
AND THE AUJUl.-Nl " TERRACE "—OVERHANGING THE STREET 



CASA GUIDI 165 

Mrs. Browning's, it may be suggested — provided funds for 
furnishing. Browning was soon occupied in buying rococo 
chairs, old tapestries, and satin from cardinals' bedsteads ; 
a neighbouring convent yielded a large bookcase carved 
with heads of angels and demons. New English or French 
publications were scarce in Florence, and the Brown- 
ings had not burdened themselves with books when they 
left England ; but the empty bookcase was a provocation, 
and presently they sent home for their old favourites. 
Pictures, too, were added later, bargains one and all ; the 
great triumph being Browning's discovery in a corn-shop a 
mile outside the city of five paintings, in connexion with 
which the learned mentioned the names of Cimabue, Giottino, 
and Ghirlandaio — such works, in fact, as he afterwards 
described in Old Pictures itt Florence. Much care, doubtless, 
went to the hanging of these treasures and the arrangement 
of other purchases ; after which their owners would sally 
forth to drive in the Cascine, the park of Florence, or on foot 
to look at the sunset on the Arno or watch Cellini's Perseus 
bathed in moonlight. In June took place the first elections 
to the Tuscan parliament ; the members walked through 
Florence in procession, and impressed Browning by the 
gravity and dignity of their demeanour. Tuscan soldiers, 
meanwhile, had borne their part in the earlier and successful 
conflicts with the Austrians, and at Curtalone and Montanara 
showed that they knew how to die. 

This summer the Brownings attempted a more ambitious 
holiday. With Fano, a little seaport on the Adriatic, as 
their destination, they crossed the Apennines ; but the 
place was a disappointment in regard to climate, " the very 
air swooning in the sun." Ancona, whither they migrated 
after three days, " a striking sea city, holding up against the 
brown rocks and elbowing out the purple tides," was a little 
more endurable. Here they managed to remain a week, 
subsisting on fish and cold water ; and then went northward 
along the coast, through Pesaro and Rimini to Ravenna, 
where Dante, whose tomb they saw, had died an exile. 
Thence they re-crossed the Apennines by way of Forli, glad 
to breathe cool air once more, and spell-bound by the jagged 
and wooded splendour of the mountains. They had been 



i66 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

away from Florence just three weeks, and the heat had been 
the only drawback. One picture at Fano, Domenichino's 
" David," made them feel that they could not agree with the 
estimate of that artist formed by the " graduate of Oxford," 
whose modern Painters they had lately read ; another, 
Guercino's " Guardian Angel," which hangs in the dim light 
of the church of San Agostino, charmed them even more, 
and inspired one of Browning's tenderest poems. The 
personality of Alfred Domett was brought vividly before 
him, whether by the memory of some other picture admired 
by them both, or by the sight of "the unplumbed, salt, 
estranging sea " which parted them. Domett must share 
with his friend, and that friend's wife, the glad emotion of 
the time : — 

" Guercino drew this angel I saw teach 

(Alfred, dear friend !) that little child to pray, 
Holding the little hands up, each to each 

Pressed gently — with his own head turned away 
Over the earth where so much lay before him 
Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him, 
And he was left at Fano by the beach. 

" We were at Fano, and three times we went 
To sit and see him in his chapel there. 
And drink his beauty to our soul's content — 
My angel with me too. " ' 

The lines end, as we have seen, with an expression of anxiety 
for his friend's welfare. The Guardian Angel is not, strictly 
speaking, a " dramatic lyric " ; it is a fragment of auto- 
biography. The poet does not assume the mask of an 
imaginary person, as, for instance, in Old Pictures in Florence, 
but speaks unmistakably in his own. The poem appears to 
have been written at Ancona, during his stay there ; and if 
that is the case it gives an intimate idea of the religious 
attitude of a mind already meditating, perhaps, the Christmas 
Eve and Easter Day of 1850. 

Browning had now been two years in Italy, and it would 
seem that his constitution missed the more bracing air of 

' The Guardian Angel : a Picture at Fano, 




THK (;UARI)IAN ANGEL 

BV C;i'RRCINO. (S. AGOSTINO. FANO.) THIS IS IIIK riCTURE DESClilTilCD IN THE FOEM 



WILLIAM WETMORE STORY 167 

northern latitudes ; at any rate, soon after the return to 
Florence from what had not been exactly an invigorating 
holiday, although an enjoyable one, he fell ill, and was laid 
aside for nearly a month with an ulcerated throat, accom- 
panied by fever. He refused to see a doctor ; but happily 
an amateur physician intervened. Father Prout, who was 
passing through Florence on his way to Rome, burst in 
breezily upon the dejected household. Recognizing that 
weakness was the root of the trouble, he prescribed regular 
potions of port wine and eggs, which proved a most successful 
remedy ; and his cheerful society, for " he came to doctor 
and remained to talk," completed the cure. Doubly welcome 
must the Father's equable spirits have been at a time when 
the new-born hopes of Italy seemed likely to perish. Milan 
had capitulated to the Austrians, and Charles Albert, left in 
the lurch by some of his allies and not reinforced by others, 
agreed to an armistice. His motive in doing so was to 
gather strength for a fresh attack, but it was not everywhere 
appreciated. The Pope's abandonment of progressive prin- 
ciples was another disappointment. The Brownings must 
have been glad, as the year closed, to have fresh matter of 
interest in their personal affairs. The approaching publica- 
tion of the second edition of Browning's poems, in the 
preparation of which he had had the help of Forster, Talfourd, 
and Procter, was at last notified in the Athemzum ;'^ and A 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon was successfully revived by Phelps at 
Sadler's Wells theatre. During this autumn, too. Browning 
improved his acquaintance with the American sculptor, 
William Wetmore Story, who is to be counted among his 
half-dozen greatest friends. They were drawn together by 
their common love of art and literature. Story had been 
bred to the law, but his artistic instincts were stronger than 
his legal aptitudes, though these were considerable. It was 
after giving proof of both in his own country that he was 
commissioned to execute a statue of his father, Judge 
Story, to be erected in the memorial chapel of the cemetery 
of Mount Auburn, near Boston. This commission was the 
determining factor in his life ; for, aware that his education 

' Pauline and Sordello were not included ; the latter was held over for 
revision, and Browning had no desire to reprint Pauline. 



i68 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

in the sculptor's art was still embryonic, he sailed for Italy, 
to pursue his studies at the fountain-head ; and so congenial 
did they prove, and so successful was his first portrait-study 
in marble, that sculpture became his life's work and Italy his 
second and adopted country. Arriving in Florence early in 
1848, he called upon the Brownings, very probably at G. S. 
Hillard's suggestion. Not long afterwards he left for Rome ; 
but returning in the autumn provided himself with a studio, 
and soon became their friend. 

There is a gap, at this juncture, in Mrs. Browning's 
correspondence ; and when she resumes it Casa Guidi has 
another inmate. Her child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett 
Browning, was born on 9 March, 1849, He came upon 
Florence at a stormy period ; for within three days a 
revolution, mainly effected by the people of Leghorn and 
happily bloodless, drove out the Grand Duke ; and Browning 
from the windows of his house saw a tree of liberty planted 
close to his door, amid the booming of cannon and the 
ringing of bells. This affair, the result rather of local jealousies 
than of patriotism, was destined to be advantageous neither 
to Tuscany nor to Italy. Of a more serious and definitive 
cast was the news which presently arrived from Lombardy. 
Charles Albert had made his effort, and failed. On the 
stricken field of Novara, where the bravery of the Italian 
troops and the enthusiasm of Garabaldi and his red-shirted 
volunteers, among whom Mazzini served, proved no match 
for the greater numbers of the Austrians and the superior skill 
of the veteran Radetsky, the King abdicated in favour of his 
son, Victor Emmanuel. The cause of Italian unity was for 
the time overthrown, and another decade was to pass before 
its resuscitation. In Florence the natural reaction followed. 
The Grand Duke returned, in an Austrian uniform, escorted 
by Austrian bayonets. This time, unhappily, there was 
bloodshed, of which Browning was a witness. The tree of 
liberty, planted seven weeks earlier, "came down with a 
crash " ; the promoters of revolution subsided ; and Brown- 
ing, as he beheld the collapse of the short-lived Tuscan 
republic, may well have recalled his own cynically humorous 
Ogniben, in A Soul's Tragedy^ who had *' known three-and- 
twenty leaders of revolts." 



DEATH OF BROWNING'S MOTHER 169 

No doubt the new joy of fatherhood largely mitigated 
his public disappointments. Grief, however, soon clouded 
this happiness ; for shortly after his son's birth his mother 
died. He felt the blow as a man must who has had so good 
a mother, and loved her so devotedly. His subsequent 
depression made change of scene imperative, though he had 
little heart for it. Mrs. Browning, however, to whom the 
necessity was apparent, at last prevailed, and early in July 
they left Florence on a tour of exploration. Driving north- 
wards along the coast, by the pinewoods and the marble 
mountains of Carrara, they passed through Lerici, on the 
bay of Spezzia, and Seravezza, a mountain village which 
attracted them ; but as neither spot afforded suitable ac- 
commodation, they determined to see what the more 
sophisticated Baths of Lucca had to offer. The place had 
a bad name for gaming and scandal, but owing to the 
troubles of the time it was now comparatively deserted ; and 
there was no denying the beauty of its surroundings. The 
Bagni di Lucca, now accessible by a railway which climbs up 
the mountain valley from the plain on which Lucca stands, 
four miles away, was then a favourite summer resort with the 
Florentine English. It consists of three villages ; the first, 
called Ponte, from the fact that a bridge there spans the river 
Lima, was a kind of miniature Baden-Baden ; the second, 
Alia Villa, where was the Duke of Lucca's summer abode, 
stands on higher ground ; the third, Bagni Caldi, perched 
highest of all, had to be approached, on foot or donkey-back, 
by winding, stone-paved paths. 

It is easy to imagine which of the three villages took the 
Brownings' fancy. They settled themselves for the summer 
in the highest house of Bagni Caldi, " a sort of eagle's nest," 
far from all reminders of Austrian occupation, and hearing 
only the cicale and the murmur of the mountain stream. 
Here, in the fine air and calming solitudes. Browning's 
health and spirits mended, the baby throve, and Mrs. 
Browning gained such an accession of strength as she 
had not known since girlhood. She was able to climb 
the hills and explore the forests with her husband. 
One day the whole party, Browning on horseback, Mrs. 
Browning, the child and nurse on donkeys, went on a 



lyo THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

formidable expedition. Prato Fiorito was their objective, a 
volcanic region rent with ravines, the watcher of many 
mountains and of a distant sea, approached by a five miles' 
steep ascent through the chestnut woods and along the bed 
of dried-up torrents. When they reached home at six in the 
evening they had been away ten hours. So their summer 
passed, a period of isolation which pleased them well. A 
belated Galignani brought them news of the outside world, 
and occasionally they dropped down to Ponte, where a Mr. 
Stuart lectured on Shakespeare and gratified them by citing 
Mrs. Jameson as an authority. They had a visit too from 
Charles Lever, who was living at Ponte, and was the pre- 
siding genius of all amusements there. Mrs. Browning (very 
singularly, seeing she was so omnivorous a devourer of 
novels) could not read Lever's ; she was pleased, however, 
by his cordial and vivacious manner. The visit was returned ; 
indeed Browning called more than once, but Lever did not 
pursue the acquaintance. The lives which the two families 
elected to live were probably too divergent to make much 
intercourse attractive to either. Browning at this period 
avoided general society, while Lever courted it. " It feeds 
my lamp," he said, " which would die out otherwise." The 
receptions which afforded inspiration to the novelist would 
have been a weariness to the poet. 

The Brownings had more in common with another visitor 
who sought them out on their return to Florence in October. 
This was the Countess Ossoli, until lately Margaret Fuller. 
She had been the first editor of the Dial, the organ of New 
England Transcendentalism ; and had the distinction of 
being succeeded in that post by no less a personage than 
Emerson. She had written in the New York Tribune an 
appreciative review of Bells and Pomegranates, but a better 
passport to Browning's heart was that she had placed his 
wife "above any female writer the world has yet known." 
Signora Ossoli was fresh from the siege of Rome, where her 
husband had fought in the ranks among the defenders of the 
short-lived Roman Republic and she had nursed the wounded. 
Now they were to remain six months in Florence ; and from 
their rooms in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella she often 
crossed the Arno to Casa Guidi. "I see the Brownings 



MARGARET FULLER 171 

often," she writes, " and love and admire them both more 
and more, as I know them better. Mr. Browning enriches 
every hour I pass with him, and is a most cordial, true and 
noble man." ^ She was deeply infected with socialistic opinions, 
of which at that time red was the symbolic and significant 
hue ; and these doctrines were abhorrent to her new friends. 
Mrs. Browning is explicit on this point : " I love liberty so 
intensely that I hate Socialism." And Browning says the 
same thing, by implication, in his sonnet W/iy I am a Liberal. 
Nevertheless, both husband and wife were attracted by 
Signora Ossoli's personality. She was certainly an interesting 
woman. She had seen and spoken with George Sand and 
fired Mrs. Browning with an ambition to do likewise ; she 
had been in touch with many of the leading minds in 
America ; and one feels that in the talks at Casa Guidi with 
one who had been so closely connected with the " Brook Farm 
experiment " the Englishwoman was unconsciously acquiring 
material for some of the views afterwards to be expressed in 
Aurora Leigh. Sad and full of forebodings, Signora Ossoli 
passed her last evening in Italy at the Brownings' home. 
She never reached her own country. The ship in which she 
sailed was dashed to pieces on the shores of America, and 
she perished with her husband and child. To Mrs. Browning 
the shock of her death was intensified by the manner of it, 
since it recalled to her the loss of her own dearly loved 
brother. 

To these days, too, belongs the formation of another 
friendship, destined to be of a more intimate and permanent 
character. Miss Isa Blagden was described by Browning as 
a " bright, delicate, electric woman " ; she was also a woman 
of ready sympathy and active kindness. Other recommenda- 
tions, had any been needed, were, that she lived by her pen, 
was a lover of flowers and dogs, and shared Mrs. Browning's 
growing admiration for Louis Napoleon. In this admiration 
Browning was no participant. The French President's protest 
against the misgovernment of the restored Pope was well 
enough ; but it seemed to him, as to others, somewhat incon- 
sistent in one who had played so considerable a part in his 
restoration. 

' Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, vol. ii. p. 311. 



172 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The spring of 1850 was marked by two events of signal 
interest to the Brownings. One was the marriage of Mrs. 
Browning's sister Henrietta to Captain Surtees Cook, in 
regard to which Mr. Barrett behaved precisely as he had done 
in his eldest daughter's case ; the other, the appearance of 
Christmas Eve and Easter Day, Browning's first new publica- 
tion since the last number of Bells and Pomegranates. This 
poem, though no doubt it had occupied his thoughts earlier, 
appears to have been composed after his return from Bagni 
di Lucca, The publishers were Chapman and Hall ; two 
hundred copies were sold in the first fortnight, after which 
the demand flagged. Of its merits and its interpretation 
extremely divergent views were expressed. The Athena;um, 
while admitting the beauty of many isolated passages, 
deprecated the discussion of religious questions in what it 
termed ** doggrel verse " ; while the Examiner, no less friendly 
and appreciative than it had shown itself in the case of 
Paracelsus, gave unrestricted praise. 

Those who would deduce from this poem, or rather pair 
of poems, a precise conclusion as to their author's religious 
belief are confronted by an initial difficulty. There is no 
apparent reason why the narrator in Christmas Eve should 
not have also seen the visions described by the chief speaker 
in Easter Day, but Browning is careful to point out that they 
are two distinct persons : 

" It chanced that I had cause to cross 
The common where the chapel was, 
Our friend spoke of, the other day." 

There is also the third character — Easter Day being a 
dialogue — to be reckoned with ; and he is by no means in 
accord with the seer of visions. The poems, therefore, are 
" dramatic," and it is consequently unsafe to identify Brown- 
ing with any of his three characters. He would certainly 
have resented such identification. Short of it, however, the 
reader may naturally and reasonably desire to form some 
general notion of the poet's attitude towards the Protestant, 
the Roman Catholic and the rationalistic conceptions of 
Christianity, as set forth in Christmas Eve ; and towards the 
question at issue in Easter Day, what it means " to be a 



"CHRISTMAS EVE" 173 

Christian." English thought was very much occupied with 
these topics towards the middle of the nineteenth century. 
On the one hand, the Tractarian movement might well appear 
to have a Romish tendency when its chief apostle joined the 
Church of Rome ; on the other hand, the publication of 
Strauss's Lebcn Jesu seemed a no less formidable menace to 
the reformed faith. Browning is not the only Victorian 
poet whose verse is troubled by the controversies of the time. 
Tennyson, eight years earlier, made one of his characters 
lament 

" the general decay of faith 

Right through the world, at home was little left 

And none abroad." * 

Clough has some lines suggestively named Epi-Sirauss-ium, 
others in which he exhorts his generation to pause and 
" consider it again " ; and he too, a few months earlier than 
Browning, composed in Naples an Easter Day of his own. 
Strauss's work had appeared in an English garb three months 
before Browning left England, and there is internal evidence 
in Christmas Eve that he had read it or heard it discussed ; 
as, for instance, when he makes his professor discourse on the 
" myth of Christ," and after examination of it bid his hearers 

" Go home and venerate the myth \ 
I thus have experimented with — 
This man, continue to adore him 
Rather than all who went before him, 
And all who ever followed after ! " 

— exhorting them, in conclusion, to continue to call them- 
selves Christians and to "abhor the deist's pravity."^ But 
while Browning grappled with the German theologian, he was 
careful not to draw his portrait. The professor in the poem 
is a composite figure; his discourse embodies elements 
drawn from the teaching of Comte as well as that of Strauss. 
Browning, in short, took as wide a survey as he could of the 
rationalistic tendencies of the time. 

' T/ie Epic, being a preface to the Mofie tV Arthur. 

' See the preface to the Lifeofjesns and Strauss's later work, The Transitory 
and the Permanent in Christianity, 1839. 



174 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The narrator in Christmas Eve finds the professor's lecture 
cold comfort. It neither touches his heart nor convinces his 
intellect. It wrings from him, at the most, a tribute half- 
sorrowful, half-contemptuous : — 

" Surely for this I may praise you, my brother ! 
Will you take the praise in tears or laughter ? " 

For the Roman Catholic standpoint there is, in his opinion, 
more to be said. Beholding in his vision midnight mass 
celebrated at St. Peter's in Rome, he recognizes that the 
heart of faith is beating strongly, 

" though her head swims 

Too giddily to guide her limbs. 
* * * * 

I see the error, but above 

The scope of error, see the love." 

Where love is, there must love's embodiment be. But the 
same conclusion had been drawn in the ugly little chapel on 
the edge of the common, whose grotesque and sordid details 
take the reader's attention captive at the beginning of the 
poem. Protestantism, be it observed, is represented in its 
bleakest, Roman Catholicism in its most splendid form ; for 
all that, the narrator makes his choice without any hesitation. 

" I then, in ignorance and weakness, 
Taking God's help, have attained to think 
My heart does best to receive in meekness 
That mode of worship, as most to this mind, 
Where earthly aids being cast aside 
His All in All appears serene 
With the thinnest human veil between." 

Thus far the narrator ; but what of the poet ? Taking his 
known opinions into consideration, we may deduce this much 
from Christmas Eve : that he had a sympathetic understand- 
ing of Roman Catholicism on its moral as distinct from its 
dogmatic side, a reasoned dislike of rationalism, and, as 
might be expected in one of Nonconformist upbringing, a 
preference for simplicity in the externals of worship. This 
preference he had, in fact, lately exhibited, by causing his son 



"EASTER DAY" 175 

to be baptized in the church of the French Lutherans at 
Florence. 

Passing now to Easter Day, we may tread more securely. 
Mrs. Browning writes to Mrs. Jameson about her husband's 
new book, 

" I have complained of the asceticism in the second part, but he 
said it was ' one side of the question.' Don't think that he has taken 
to the cilix — indeed he has not — but it is his way to see things as 
passionately as other people 7^^/ them." 

With these words as commentary it is reasonable to conclude 
that Browning's intellectual sympathies are with the eager 
visionary rather than with his easy-going interlocutor. The 
former states his case passionately, at a white heat of thought ; 
no wonder, then, if he tends to overstate it. His is the instinct 
of the orator, who, in order to gain even a little, pleads for a 
great deal. He would not have his friend turn anchorite, 
but would save him from complete absorption in the things of 
sense ; would have him estimate the material world at its 
proper value, not rest in it supremely satisfied. Here is no 
call to asceticism. If God's saints were, while alive on earth 

" found grateful and content 
With the provision there, as thou, 
Yet knew he would not disallow 
• Their spirit's hunger, felt as well — 
Unsated, — not unsatable," 

certainly his sinners are not called upon to abhor their tem- 
poral surroundings. Only, we infer, they are to use them 
meetly, not darkening the casements which open upon infinity. 
Lover of art and of all things beautiful, no wearer of the hair- 
shirt, Robert Browning is to be reckoned among those for 
whom the visible world served not to hide but to reveal the 
power and the love of God. 

In spite of the description of St. Peter's, Mrs. Browning is 
not far wrong in saying that " there is nothing Italian in the 
book " ; that is to say, no Italian atmosphere. The rough 
humour which characterizes part of it is essentially British ; so 
too is the zest for hammering out abstruse arguments, and 



176 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the occasional tenderness which is the more eflfective for its 
rugged setting. This fruit shows no sign of having ripened 
under Italian skies. But Browning's thoughts had lately 
been recalled by sorrow to his home in England, and to his 
mother's religious faith ; and it is perhaps not too fanciful to 
suppose that the tug at his heart-strings of all that England 
stands for to her exiled children was a factor in determining 
the scope and methods of his poem. At any rate, it was only 
vexatious financial reasons which restrained him, in the 
summer of 1850, from turning his footsteps homeward. From 
the same cause the family remained in Florence, Browning 
with grave anxiety for his wife's health. For two months she 
was seriously ill, and it was not till September that they were 
able to get away. A short railway journey took them to 
Siena and to that cooler air which an increase in altitude of 
over a thousand feet ensures. They rented a small house 
about a mile and a half out of the town, " among a sea of 
little hills and wrapt up in vineyards and oliveyards." After 
three weeks in this peaceful spot Mrs. Browning made a fair 
recovery. Her child was ill for one day, overpowered by the 
sun ; but he was soon well again, his " singing voice " sound- 
ing joyfully about the house and garden. They were destined 
to return in other summers to Siena ; now, when this visit 
closed, they parted regretfully from their villa and its many 
delights, Browning with a special memory of a wide prospect 
of undulating hills and distant plain. A week was spent in 
Siena itself, that something might be seen of its pictures and 
its buildings ; and so, in October, back to Florence and home. 
In the same month appeared Mrs. Browning's collected 
poems, to the revision of which she had devoted much time 
and care. The volumes were made to correspond with those 
of her husband's collected works, which had been published 
by the same house, that of Chapman and Hall, the year before. 
In December Mrs. Browning notes an interesting visitor 
at Casa Guidi : Goethe's grandson, who had come to Florence 
on purpose to discuss the character of Paracelsus with his 
English interpreter. Now, too. Browning was persuaded by 
his wife to know Mrs. Trollope, whose son's impression of 
him has been quoted. At first he resisted the idea strenuously, 
because this lady had written against Liberalism and the 



MEETING WITH TENNYSON 177 

poetry of Victor Hugo ; but in the end he gave way, and 
found no reason to regret his placabih'ty. 

In the meanwhile neither husband nor wife could tolerate 
the idea of allowing another year to pass without seeing the 
familiar faces of their nearest and dearest. The spring of 
185 1 found them discussing schemes of travel. They let 
their rooms in Casa Guidi, and this was a material help. 
They talked of going southward first, to Rome and Naples ; 
but this part of the plan was dropped, as being too 
ambitious. Venice should make up for Rome ; and for 
Venice, which was to be the first halt on their homeward 
journey, they at last set out. They travelled by vettiira in 
company with Mr. and Mrs. David Ogilvy, whose acquaint- 
ance they had made during their first year at Florence. 

We may trace their progress in Mrs. Browning's letters, 
may see their gondola cutting its all but silent way to the 
Lido ; may picture them in the Venetian opera-house, or at 
their coffee in the Piazza San Marco, in a setting of " music 
and the stars." To Mrs. Browning Venice was a veritable 
city of enchantment. Here they stayed a month, and might 
have stayed longer, had not the climate proved unsuitable to 
Browning, depriving him of sleep and appetite. They spent 
a night at Padua, that they might visit Arqua, the last abiding- 
place of Petrarch ; thence through Brescia, " in a flood of 
moonlight," to Milan ; thence to the lakes and across the 
St. Gothard to Fliielen, the snow-walls seeming to overhang 
the coach on either side as they crossed the pass, though it 
was midsummer. Beautiful as Como and Maggiore were, the 
lake of Lucerne delighted them even more. Paris was at 
last reached by way of Strasburg, the distance between the 
two places being traversed in four and twenty hours of almost 
unbroken travel. Here they accidentally met Tennyson, 
who was starting with his wife on that Italian journey which 
later formed the subject of his poem The Daisy. One may 
speculate whether they touched upon the laureateship, to 
which Tennyson had lately been appointed, while the 
Athena;2i7n had canvassed Mrs. Browning's claims, and no one 
had advanced her husband's ! He pressed them to occupy 
his house at Twickenham, and though this kind offer was not 
accepted, it formed another link in a true friendship between 

N 



178 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the poets.i The Brownings remained in Paris for several 
weeks, and late in July, after an absence of nearly five years, 
they stood on English ground once more. 

' This meeting in Paris is the earliest recorded. "Mr. Browning," runs the 
account in Tennyson, a Memoir, vol. i, p, 341, "already my father's friend, was 
affectionate as ever," "The brother poets," states an unimpeachable authority, 
"were very fond of one another." 



CHAPTER XI 
WORK AND PLAY 

London hospitalities — Winter in Paris — Carlyle as fellow-traveller — 
Louis Napoleon — Mrs. Browning's enthusiasm — George Sand — Joseph 
Milsand's article on Browning's poetry — Browning's preface to the Shelley 
letters — Milsand's influence perceptible— Occasion of Browning's first 
meeting with Milsand — Their great friendship — Visit to London — Return 
to Florence — " Hermit life " there — Frederick Tennyson — Robert Lytton 
— Men and Women foreshadowed — Colombe's Birthday at the Hay- 
market— With the Storys at the Baths of Lucca — and at Rome — The 
studios in Rome — Browning sits to Page and Fisher — Hatty Hosmer 
astonishes the Romans — The Remble sisters — The Thackerays — Lock- 
hart — Picnics on the Campagna — Return to Florence — Mrs. Browning 
seriously ill — Men and Women ready for publication — Homeward once 
more. 



N 



OTHING could have been heartier than the welcome 
given by the London world of letters to the poet 
who had vanished from its midst so unexpectedly, 



" Like a ghost at break of day." 

It was natural that Browning's old friends should crowd 
about him, equally so that they should^ desire to see and 
know that other poet whose life was now bound up in his, 
who to most of them had hitherto been a name and a voice. 
Invitations poured in upon the Brownings at 26, Devonshire 
Street, where they were lodged. Forster gave a dinner in 
their honour at Thames Ditton ; Rogers invited them to break- 
fast ; they spent an evening with Carlyle. Arnould wanted 
them to share his house ; " Barry Cornwall " called repeatedly, 
and Mrs. Jameson forsook her proofs for their company, 
though the printers clamoured. Miss Haworth, whose society 
at once proved congenial to the wife of her old friend, lent 
her books on mesmerism and Swedenborg. A couple of 
days were spent at Hatcham, that Mrs. Browning might 



i8o THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

make acquaintance with her husband's family and show them 
her son. How a child, by the way. may soften literary judg- 
ments, is shown by a letter which Browning wrote about this 
time to William Cox Bennett, who sent him his Poems pub- 
lished the year before. He had previously slighted Bennett's 
muse,^ while recognizing his good-nature ; now his tone is 
altered. "Your poems," he writes, "have abundant evidence 
of the right spirit, and some of the child-pictures go to our 
very hearts in their truth and beauty, now that we have a 
child of our own." - As to Browning's father, child-lover 
that he was, his grandson went to his heart at once, where 
there was room for his new daughter too. Browning, for his 
part, had to make acquaintance with his wife's brothers, 
whose umbrage now disappeared. 

Arabel Barrett was a daily visitor, and Mrs. Surtees Cook 
came up for a week from Somersetshire to be near her sister. 
Browning found himself delighted with England, and would 
willingly have prolonged his stay ; but it soon became 
apparent that the climate was unsuitable to his wife, whose 
spirits, too, were depressed by the near neighbourhood yet 
estrangement of her father. Already the possibility of 
wintering in Paris had been discussed ; and for Paris, on the 
twenty-fifth of September, they set out. 

Whatever Browning's regrets on leaving London, it can 
hardly be denied that the Champs Elysees is a more agree- 
able locality than Devonshire Street. They occupied an 
apartment at No. 138, on the sunshiny side of that avenue, 
for which, strange to say, they paid no more than they did for 
the very inferior accommodation in London. Carlyle, who 
was bound for Paris on a visit to the Ashburtons, was their 
travelling companion, and it is worth remarking that the 
philosopher left the poet to struggle with porters and 
donaiiiers ; but his conversation, on several ensuing evenings, 
made full amends. Nor was Browning, on Carlyle's depar- 
ture, cut off from the kind of society which he enjoyed. He 
had brought letters of introduction to the Elgins, where they 

' Letters of Robert Bro'.i'ning and Elizabeth Barrett Brmvning,\o\. ii. pp. 124, 

330, 389- 

' L f tiers from Robert Brmvning to Varkus Correspondents^ edited by Thomas 
J. Wise, Second Series, vol. i. p. 12. 



IN PARIS i8i 

met Madame Mohl, to George Sand (this Mazzini gave), and 
to several leading Parisian journalists. At Madame Mohl's, 
no less than at Lady Elgin's, simplicity was the prevailing 
note. It was her ambition, which she realized, to carry on 
the tradition of the Saloni^res. A woman of character as 
well as cleverness, she received on Wednesday afternoons and 
Friday evenings, when her house in the Rue du Bac was 
thronged by eminent men and women, both native and from 
foreign capitals. The hostess made tea for her guests, 
herself boiling the water and making up the fire ; and she 
won Mrs. Browning's liking, though a pronounced opponent 
of Louis Napoleon.^ 

It was, indeed, hardly possible to be in Paris at this epoch 
without taking sides with or against the French President. 
Signs of reaction were certainly visible in the spring of 1851, 
and to a whole-hearted supporter of the democracy, such as 
Mrs. Browning was, Louis Napoleon, with his demand for the 
restoration of universal suffrage, which the Assembly had 
then revoked, might well appear the champion of the people's 
cause. On this account she was ready to forgive the rough 
treatment meted out to Thiers and Cavaignac, and even to 
overlook the bloodshed of the coup d\'tat, crime though Victor 
Mugo justly termed it. She overlooked it for the sake of the 
gift of universal sufTragc, and because its author had, as the 
subsequent //t'/'/j'i:/ A; showed, the approval of the vast majority 
of his countrymen. So, when on the fateful day he rode under 
the Brownings' window at the head of the troops, in avowed 
defiance of the Constitution, he had at least one English well- 
wisher there, for, so Mrs. Browning held, " he rode there in 
the name of the people, after all." Browning regarded him 
in a very different light. lie mistrusted him from the first. 
It is, however, convenient for the present to defer considera- 
tion of his view of the third Napoleon's career, which was to 
be set forth twenty years later in P rince Hohetisticl-Schwangau, 
Saviour of Society. 

In their admiration of the talents of George Sand, and their 

• Sec Afiufame Afo/i/ : her Salon and her Friends, by K. O'Moara. Of Lady 
Elgin, Mrs. Browning writes in 1858 : — " Her salon was one of the most agreeable 
in Paris, and she herself, with her mixture of learning and simplicity, one of the 
most interesting persons in it." 



icS2 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

wish to know her, husband and wife were quite at one. The 
visit was at last accomplished, and afterwards repeated. 
Browning also met the authoress on four other occasions. 
There is no record of her conversation, but it seems to have 
been oracular in nature, directed mostly to certain young 
Frenchmen who hung upon her utterances, and was concerned 
with topics of no special interest to her English visitors. 
During their second call she said so little that Browning 
observed that " if any other mistress of a house had behaved 
so, he would have walked out of the room." As it was, he 
saw that no incivility was intended. On the contrary, they 
were informed that she " liked them very much." Both, how- 
ever, and Browning in particular, deplored the kind of society 
• — " the ragged Red diluted with the lower theatrical " ^ — in 
which she moved ; and it is evident that they found her by 
no means so attractive as her writings. 

This was a mere episode ; more valuable, beyond all 
comparison, and the happiest outcome of their first sojourn in 
Paris, was their acquisition of the friendship of M. Joseph 
Milsand. With him of all men, it appears. Browning was in 
the most complete moral and intellectual accord ; it was of 
him that he wrote to Miss Blagden, twenty years later, "no 
words can express the love I have for him, you know : he is 
increasingly precious to me " ; " and it was to his memory that 
he dedicated, in 1887, his penultimate volume of poems, with 
the touching inscription, yll'sois absciito/i anditquc videtqae. 

Though Joseph Milsand's family had been settled at Dijon 
for upwards of a century and a half, he had some dash of 
British blood ; for his ancestor had migrated to Dijon from 
New England in 17 18. His admiration for English literature 
and institutions may conceivably be referred to his descent. 
While studying Italian masterpieces, with the design of 
becoming a painter, he made acquaintance with Ruskin's 
works, and became more interested in the canons of art than 
in its productions. A born thinker, he gave up the brush 
for the pen, and in a volume called V Esthctique Aiiglaise 
sought to familiarize his countrymen with Ruskin's theories. 

• The words, it should be noted, are Mrs, Browning's; see her LctUrs, vol. ii. 
p. 63. 

* Quoted in Mrs, Orr's JJft; p. 293, 



JOSEPH MILSAND 183 

Concurrently he abandoned the Roman Catholicism in which 
he had been brought up, and became, says his son-in-law, 
M. Blanc, ** engrossed with the problems of the soul and its 
relations to a Creator. Gradually and unawares he invented 
for himself Protestantism." ^ It is easy to see how much such 
a man and Browning would have in common. From Ruskin, 
Milsand passed on to contemporary English poets, and began 
to publish in the Revue des Deux Mondes a series of articles 
on English poetry since Byron. Tennyson was the subject 
of the first article, Browning of the second ; and it happened 
that the latter appeared in the Revue in August, 185 1, the 
month before the Brownings went to Paris.^ 

The criticism of a foreigner, at once searching and 
sympathetic, could not but gratify a poet who had met with a 
very mixed reception from the reviewers of his own country. 
Browning found himself commended for originality, imagina- 
tion and intellectual courage, as one capable above all other 
poets known to the writer of clothing the religious, ethical, 
and speculative ideas of the time in fit poetic raiment. His 
work was described as pervaded by an intense belief in the 
importance of the individual soul, by an aspiration as high as 
that of his own Paracelsus, and a determination (here we 
seem to be anticipating Brother Lippo's creed) to explore the 
higher possibilities of human life. Noteworthy as this 
appreciation is, and highly as Browning must have valued it, 
the paper contains other passages which, from an effect that 
they produced, are of even greater interest. At the very 
time of the coup ditat Browning was writing for Moxon a 
preface to a volume of Shelley's letters, hitherto unpublished. 
The letters turned out to be spurious and were withdrawn 
from circulation ; but Browning's preface remains, at once a 
tribute to the memory and the genius of Shelley and a state- 
ment of his own poetic faith. Now, if Milsand's article and 
Browning's essay be compared, it is almost impossible to 
doubt that the latter was in some degree inspired by the 
former. 

' Quoted in A French Friend of BrrMtting, by Th. Bentzon, from which these 
particulars are derived. 

* His attention is said to have been in the first instance directed to Browning's 
poetry by Mrs. Fraser Corkran, a cultivated Englishwoman resident in Paris, 



184 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

That one may absorb and at a later date unconsciously 
reproduce the thoughts of others is commonly admitted ; 
similarly, these may enable us, again without our realizing 
it, to formulate our own. To suppose that Browning was 
thus influenced in the present case is not to belittle in the 
slightest degree his reasoning powers. If the chemistry of 
another's thought enabled the ideas which were floating in 
his mind to crystallize, those ideas are not the less his own. 
It is surely one of the proper functions of the critical process 
that it should help the creative imagination to fructify, 
instead of hindering it, as brutality and ignorance, masquerad- 
ing as criticism, have so often done. That bastard criticism 
Browning evidently understood. " The E pur si muove of the 
astronomer," he writes, " was as bitter a word as any uttered 
before or since by a poet over his rejected living work, in that 
depth of conviction which is so like despair." But Milsand's 
was of a different order. The theory of poetry which he 
shadowed forth was apprehended, amplified and defined by 
Browning. Thus, in Milsand's estimate of Browning as 
primarily and most preciously an introspective poet, secon- 
darily an artist or " maker," there lurks the germ of Browning's 
doctrine that there are two kinds of poetry, the subjective and 
the objective, of which the first is infinitely the higher. 
Again, " Browning's explorations," wrote his reviewer, " are 
adventures of the intellect ; his faculties expend themselves 
within^ " The subjective poet," says Browning, 

" digs in his own soul, as the nearest reflex of that absolute mind, 
according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and 
speak." 

This is his central argument, upon which he proceeds to 
enlarge, applying it to Shelley's genius. 

" His noblest characteristic," he says, " I call his simultaneous per- 
ception of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good 
in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet station between both, 
swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the connection of each 
with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I 
have knowledge.' ... I would rather consider Shelley's poetry as a 

' Here, again, is a curious similarily of phrase. " C'est un jeu pour lui," 
Milsand wrote of Browning, "de distinguer Ics rapports qui unissent les clioses 



"THE SUBJECTIVE POET" 185 

sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment of the correspon- 
dency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of 
the actual to the ideal than I would isolate and separately appraise 
the worth of many detachable portions which might be acknowledged 
as utterly perfect in a lower moral point of view, under the mere 
conditions of art. ... It would be easy to take my stand on suc- 
cessful instances of objectivity in Shelley, the unrivalled Cenci, 
Jiilia?i and Maddolo, etc., but I prefer to look for the highest attain- 
ment, not simply the high, and seeing it I hold by it." 

Here, then, is Browning's idea of what is loftiest in poetry. 
Anything more unlike the doctrine of " art for art's sake " it 
would be difficult to conceive. It was the " subjective " poet 
that he revered in Shelley ; it was " subjectivity," we may 
infer, to which he himself desired, as a poet, to attain. 

Further, this highest kind of poetry, he argues, can only 
issue from a pure source, being an effluence rather than a 
production ; and we cannot love it without loving the source 
from whence it came. Shelley the man, as well as Shelley 
the poet, still retained the homage of his early worshipper. 
We see this as late as the Memorabilia of 1855.^ It was 
therefore a real grief to Browning when he learnt, some three 
years later, the facts as to Shelley's treatment of his first 
wife. He had his information from Thomas Hookham, jun., 
a bookseller and friend of Shelley, who showed him letters 
which he had himself received from Harriet Shelley. 

These, in particular the one which she w^rote in a state of 
bewilderment, inquiring where her husband might be, satis- 
fied him that the version of the affair hitherto accepted was 
no longer tenable. It was apparent that husband and wife 
had not parted by mutual consent, but that he had deserted 
her. This discovery caused Browning deep regret. He 
considered Shelley to have been, at that period of his life, 
" half crazy and wholly inexcusable." He could not regard 
him or, by consequence, his poetry, in the same light as 

disseminees a tons les coins de I'infini, et qui vont de I'une a I'autre comme des 
fils." 

' Browning might, of course, have known many persons who had seen and 
spoken with Shelley. Indeed, he was acquainted with several of his intimates, 
Leigh Hunt and Trelawney among others. He saw Trelawney at Leghorn in 
1844, in the course of his second Italian journey. 



i86 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

formerly.* Yet Lucifer, Son of the Morning, lost not all his 
brightness in his fall. For Browning, Shelley's proud pre- 
eminence was gone ; but he loved his poetry, and loved to 
read it aloud, to the end of his days. 

It was in January, 1852, when Paris was recovering her 
normal serenity, that Browning first met Milsand. The 
occasion was as follows. Miss Mitford, Mrs. Browning's 
intimate friend, had just published her Recollections of a 
Literary Life. The book contained a chapter on the Brown- 
ings' poetry which would have given them pleasure, had not 
the authoress seen fit to add an account of the accident 
which robbed Mrs. Browning of her favourite brother. To 
this tragedy Mrs. Browning, to the end of her life, could 
hardly bear the slightest reference ; when, therefore, she 
accidentally heard of her friend's indiscretion, which had 
made her sorrow public property, she was acutely distressed. 
She did not disguise her feelings from Miss Mitford, who 
hastened to express the deepest regret ; and it is creditable 
to the two women that their friendship survived what might, 
had either's nature been less generous, have wrecked it. 
Meanwhile Milsand was writing an article on Mrs. Browning's 
poetry ; and his editor furnished him with a copy of the 
AthencBum containing, in the course of a review, the unlucky 
passage. The details, he thought, might be of service. But 
Milsand's finer nature felt instinctively that their inclusion 
might be a source of pain, and he came to Browning to ask 
for guidance. The article appeared in due course, without — 
need it be said 1 — a single word which could offend. The 
sensibility and sympathy displayed in this matter by the 
French critic was the straighest way to Robert Browning's 
heart ; and the intimacy of the two men grew apace. 

In the previous November Browning's father and sister 
had paid him a visit of some weeks' duration. In the April 
of this year their lease of the Hatcham house expired, and 
they decided to make a new home in Paris. Browning had 
the satisfaction of seeing them settled in an apartment before 
his own stay in Paris ended. There are still living those 
who recall the kindness of the elder Browning to them in 

' See Wise, ut supra^ vol. ii. pp. 25-26 and 49-50, and Second Series, vol. i. 
pp. 86-89. 



NEW ACQUAINTANCES 187 

their childhood, and how they were fascinated by the weird 
caricatures he drew ; who have written of his keen interest in 
crime and criminals, and of his delight in some old volume 
picked up at a bookstall for a few sous, absorbed in which he 
would become wholly oblivious of the lapse of time and the 
advent of the dinner-hour.^ 

^ The idea of returning to Florence before the ensuing 
wmter set in now began to be canvassed ; but in the mean- 
while the poet and his wife wished to see more of their 
English friends. Accordingly, they migrated to London at 
the end of June, and took up their quarters at 58, Welbeck 
Street. Mrs. Surtees Cook was lodging some twenty doors 
off, and Miss Arabel Barrett, in Wimpole Street, was a near 
neighbour. It is again a story of many social engagements. 
At Kenyon's house at Wimbledon they met Landor, who 
delighted Mrs. Browning by expressing a high opinion of 
Louis Napoleon's talents. Browning told Domett, long 
afterwards, that Landor wrote, though leaving it unpublished, 
an Imaginary Conversation in which she was one of the inter- 
locutors. Was it at that meeting, one wonders, as her enthusiasm 
caught fire and she answered him in her low, impressive 
tones, that he conceived the idea ? Invitations to the country 
poured in upon the Brownings, but only one was accepted. 
It took them to Farnham, whither a year later Tennyson 
went house-hunting. Their visit was made memorable by a 
meeting with Charles Kingsley, whose " Christian Socialism " 
seemed to Mrs. Browning, with her strong individualist 
proclivities, " wild and theoretical " ; but the man himself 
they liked immensely. Another first meeting was with 
Mazzini, brought to their lodgings by Mrs. Carlyle ; another 
was with D. G. Rossetti, who came in William Allingham's 
company ; another was with Ruskin ; yet another, on 5 Sep- 
tember, with Hallam Tennyson, the poet laureate's son, 
who had come into the world some three weeks earlier. On 
the day of the christening Browning held the baby for some 
ten minutes. He tossed the child in his arms, so he told 

' See Lady Ritchie's Records of Tennyson, etc. ; and Miss H. Corkran's 
Celebrities and I. That love of the grotesque which so often is visible in the son's 
poetry w.as clearly an inheritance from the father. 



i88 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Domett, and Tennyson, who was looking on, remarked, " Ah, 
that is as good as a glass of champagne to him ! " * 

But the days were shortening, Mrs. Browning began to 
droop in the autumnal air and her husband consequently to 
be anxious. It was probably without reluctance that, early 
in November, they set out for Italy. A halt was called in 
Paris, and once more fortune favoured Mrs. Browning ; for 
from the balcony of Mr. Fraser Corkran, Paris correspondent 
of the Morning Chronicle^ who had an apartment in the Rue 
Basse des Remparts, Boulevard des Italiens, they witnessed 
Louis Napoleon's progress through the city. This was 
almost immediately before he took the title of Emperor. 
He rode alone, ten paces in advance of his escort, thereby 
wringing from Miss Cushman, the American actress, who sat 
by Mrs. Browning, the reluctant admission, " That's fine, I 
must say." It may be added that Mrs. Browning's son 
showed himself no less enthusiastic for Napoleon than was 
his mother. 

The route chosen for the passage of the Alps (from 
motives of economy) was the Mont Cenis. But the cold was 
excessive, and Mrs. Browning became so unwell that a week's 
stay at Genoa was imperative. At Turin it had been 
December, but in Genoa it was June ; warmth proved a 
restorative, and the party reached their journey's end in 
safety. 

There was a delightful homeliness about Casa Guidi, 
where everything looked as if they had left it the day before. 
To Mrs. Browning there was no place like Florence ; and if 
to her husband it seemed dull at first, after the crowded 
sociability of London and the life and variety of Parisian 
boulevards, yet the old fascination was not slow to reassert 
itself. " You can't think," writes Mrs. Browning to Miss 
Blagden, "how we have caught up our ancient traditions just 
where we left them, and relapsed into our former soundless, 
stirless hermit life." -^ Certainly since they left Florence 



' From Dometl's Diaiy, The story is also told by n writer in ihc Journal of 
EJiuation, i February, iSSi, by way of commentary on Tennyson's dedication of 
his Ballads and at Iter Poems (iS8o) to his grandson, where the child is described 
as "Crazy with laughter and babble and earth^s vetv rt'/wr." 

* Letters of E. B. B., vol. ii. p, 99. 




CARICATURK DRAWN BY ROBERT BROWNING, SENIOR 



FREDERICK TENNYSON 189 

sixteen months earlier the life they led had not been favour- 
able to composition ; but now, with the recaptured quiet, the 
impetus returned. On 24 February, 1853, Browning writes a 
long letter to Milsand. "We live wholly alone here," he 
says. " I have not left the house one evening since our 
return. I am writing — a first step towards popularity for 
me — lyrics with more music and painting than before, so as 
to get people to hear and see . . . Something to follow, if I 
can compass it." These words foreshadow the Men and 
Women of 1855, which can yield precedence to none other of 
his works save The Ring and the Book. Some of his " fifty 
Men and Women " were already in existence. Love among 
the Ruins, Women and Roses, and Childe Roland are said to 
have been composed in Paris on three successive days, the 
ist, 2nd, and 3rd January, 1852 ; and it is reasonable, as we 
have seen, to suppose a still earlier date for The Gnardiayt 
Angel. Old Pictures in Florence may well have now been 
written. The Grand Duke had embarked on a course of 
repression, his subjects were in despair, and Browning, whose 
sympathies were entirely with them, has his fling at him in 
this poem ; for Leopold is to be identified with " a certain 
dotard " whom the writer would rejoice to see pitched " to 
the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard." Meanwhile 
Mrs. Browning had begun to write Attrora Leigh. 

The remark about loneliness is, of course, comparative, as 
this same letter to Milsand shows. " I have a new acquaint- 
ance here, much to my taste," it goes on, " Tennyson's elder 
brother, a very earnest, simple, and truthful man, with many 
admirable talents and acquirements. He is very shy. He 
sees next to no company, but comes here and we walk 
together." ^ This was Frederick Tennyson, poet and musician, 
who was humorously but with exaggeration reported to sit 
in the large hall of his villa in the Fiesole Road " in the midst 
of his forty fiddlers." ^ He, in his turn, has drawn Browning's 
portrait with a few happy strokes : " a man of infinite learning, 
jest, and bonhommie, and, moreover, a sterling heart that 
reverbs no hollowness." ^ These excellent gifts won also the 

' Quoted in Lady Ritchie's Records, etc., p. 205, 
- Tennyson, A Mcnimr, vol, i. p. 149. 
' Ibid. p. 382. 



190 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

regard of a young attache of the Florentine Legation, Robert 
Lytton, the noveh'st's son, who shared with a colleague, 
Henry Drummond Wolff, a small house in the Via Larga 
(now the Via Cavour). ^ The intimacy with Lytton grew 
rapidly; he was himself preening his wings for a poetic flight, 
and dreaming of anything rather than of the viceregal glories 
which the future held for him. 

In April Colomhes Birthday was produced at the Hay- 
market theatre, thus fulfilling the original purpose of its 
being, though its author was not financially interested in its 
appearance. Once more, as in the two earlier of his acted 
plays, the heroine's part was taken by Miss Helen Fauci t, to 
whom the success achieved was largely due. The drama 
held the boards for a fortnight, and though doubts had been 
felt as to its power to keep the attention of a mixed audience, 
they proved unfounded. The Literary Gazette spoke of the 
"close and fascinated attention" of the house, the Athenceum 
recorded "an apparent perfect success on the first night," 
and the Examiner noticed that amid the general applause no 
jarring notes were to be heard. To the author and his wife, 
deep in the study of German mystics, or holding converse 
with the speculative Tennyson and the visionary Lytton, that 
applause must have sounded faintly, as sounds in the ears 
of upland harvesters the surf breaking on a distant shore.^ 

At the Baths of Lucca, during three summer months of 
this year, the same life of thought and composition was led, 
varied by the enjoyment of such society as was " pleasant, 
wise, and good." The Brownings did not return to the 
"eagle's nest" at Bagni Caldi of four years before, but 
occupied Casa Tolomei at Alia Villa, a house which boasted 
a spare room (occupied for a time by Robert Lytton), a row 
of plane trees, and a garden of its own, lit up at night by 
fireflies. At no great distance lived Mrs. Stisted, "Queen 
of the Baths," as she was called, whose harmless eccentri- 
cities have been chronicled by Trollope.^ She was a collector 
of curiosities, and Browning mentions having seen and copied 

• JRambling Recollections, by Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, vol. i. p. 149. 

* The play was also produced, either this or the following year, at the Harvard 
Athenreum, Boston, U.S.A., with Miss Davenport as Colombe. 

' What I Remember, by T, A. Trollope, vol. ii. ch. 8. 



AT BAGNI DI LUCCA WITH THE STORYS 191 

certain variations in one of Shelley's poems, from a manuscript 
in her possession.^ 

But the most constant associates of the Brownings at 
this time and place were the sculptor, Story, and his wife. 
With them they had "a grand donkey-excursion" to the 
mountain village of Benabbia, and repeated the Prato Fiorito 
expedition of the earlier year. Long evenings were spent 
at one another's houses, long days out-of-doors by the banks 
of Lima or in the chestnut woods, hours filled with reading, 
sketching, talk, and singing, in whose record there obtrudes 
only one complaint on Story's part, that Browning did not 
smoke ! ^ He found no friend like the poet, he has recorded, 
with whom to walk "the higher ranges of art and philo- 
sophy";-^ putting in prose something of what Lytton had 
a little earlier expressed in verse, that Browning was one 

" Than whom a mightier master never 

Touch'd the deep chords of hidden things ; 
Nor error did from truth dissever 
With keener glance ; nor made endeavour 

To rise on bolder wingo 
In those high regions of the soul 
Where thought itself grows dim with awe." * 

This, it is arguable, is to claim too much ; but as an expres- 
sion of contemporary opinion it is at least noteworthy. 

It was presumably with reference to the departure of his 
friends, who had preceded him to Florence, that Browning in 
October wrote to Story, " This poor place has given up the 
ghost now, and we really want to get away." ^ At any rate, 
the Brownings were back in Florence before the month was 
out, but only for a brief sojourn. For their old ambition of 
seeing Rome together was now about to be realized. 

They travelled by veitura, the journey taking eight days, 
past Assisi, a spot rich in memories of " sweet saint Francis," 
whose love for animals they both shared, and Terni, 

' Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 47. 

* William Wetmore Story, by Henry James, vol. i. pp. 271-4. 
' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 68. 

* From the dedication oi The Wanderer, by "Owen Meredith," 1859. 

* W. W. Story, ut supra, vol. i, p. 279. 



192 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

in whose neighbourhood the waters of the Velino leap 
tumultuously to join the Nera. If the last stage of their 
progress may be taken as an index of the earlier ones, they 
were certainly a joyous trio, for, writes Mrs. Browning, " in 
the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini ^ 
singing actually." As for her, we have it on her authority 
that the only sort of excitement and fatigue which did her no 
harm was travelling.^ The Storys, choosing the sea-route 
from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia, were again the advanced 
guard, and had secured their friends an apartment at 43, Bocca 
di Leone, where lighted fires and familiar faces made the 
new arrivals welcome. But cheer soon gave place to sadness. 
The very next morning Story's eldest boy was taken ill and 
died before evening, and his little daughter sickened of 
gastric fever and was for some time in danger.^ She re- 
covered ; but the sorrow of their friends could not but cast a 
shadow on the Brownings' earlier impressions of Rome. For 
Mrs. Browning, indeed, who had witnessed the bereaved 
mother's grief, and with her had visited the child's grave, the 
cloud never wholly lifted. " Rome is spoiled to me," she 
writes ; " there's the truth." Besides, she was in an agony of 
apprehension for Penini ; but as time passed and he con- 
tinued well, the faculty of enjoyment, though its edge was 
blunted, gradually returned. 

England and America were at this period handsomely 
represented in the artistic and literary life of Rome. There 
was Crawford, practically the first American sculptor to pitch 
his tent in Rome, who a few years earlier had borne arms in 
her defence ; there was Gibson, then at the height of his 
fame, who was described as resembling rather an old Greek 
than a modern Christian ; * there was Page, whose com- 
patriots spoke of him as " the American Titian " ; there was 



* So their child was called, " Penini," afterwards shortened to Pen, arose from 
bis attempt at pronouncing his second baptismal name, Wiedemann. 

* Letters of E. B. B., vol. ii. p. 75. 

* It was to her, during her convalescence after this illness, that Thackeray 
read aloud "The Rose and the Ring." Story, ut supra, vol. i. p. 286. 

* Italics, by F. P. Cobbe. Not the highest type of Greek sculptor, however, 
for he favoured the heresy of colouring statuary, as his "tinted Venus" proves. 
"Pity," Crawford's masterpiece, now watches over the grave of his son, F.Marion 
Crawford, the novelist. 



THE STUDIOS IN ROME 193 

Leighton — "young Leighton of Rome," as Mrs. Browning 
calls him — who at the age of twenty-three was painting the 
** Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the 
streets of Florence," which was to make him famous ; 
and many lesser lights. The studios attracted Browning 
irresistibly. Presently he was sitting to two artists, 
Page and W. Fisher.^ Page was unhappily possessed by 
a theory which time has falsified. Holding that the lapse of 
years did not tone a picture, he deliberately undertoned his 
in the first instance. His portrait of Browning, presented by 
him to the poet's wife and now in Venice, was " the wonder 
of everybody " ; but within two years Browning is found 
expressing the fear that it is deteriorating. " So it fares," he 
writes to D. G. Rossetti, " with Page's pictures for the most 
part ; but they are like Flatman the Poet's famous ' Kings ' 
in a great line he wrote — 'Kings do not die — they only 
disappear ! ' " ^ The words are prophetic ; for the colour has 
not stood, blackness has stolen over the canvas, and the 
likeness can now barely be discerned. 

Our list of artists does not pretend to be exhaustive, but 
Hatty Hosmer, who was something of a pioneer as well as a 
sculptor, must not be left out. The name of this young 
American lady figures repeatedly in the memoirs of the 
period. A pupil of Gibson, she occupied a studio close to 
his, and achieved considerable success in her profession. Her 
"Sleeping Fawn," probably her best work, was sold for 
;^iooo. She was clever, hard-working, ready-witted and 
independent ; qualities which speedily won the Brownings' 
friendship. She has been described, moreover, as " the most 
bewitching sprite the world ever saw " ; ^ and she shocked the 
dignified Romans by insisting on her right to walk alone and 
ride her horse alone. The latter practice was, indeed, for- 
bidden, on account of the excitement which it caused. " She 
is an immense favourite with us both," writes Mrs. Browning. 

Even greater favourites, however, were the Kemble sisters, 
as typically English as was Miss Hosmer typically American. 

^ A reproduction of Fisher's portrait appears as frontispiece to the second 
volume of E. B. B.'s Letters. 
• Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 19. 
» By Miss F. P. Cobbe, in her Life, 
O 



194 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

" Thackeray is here," writes Fanny Ketrible,^ " and the 
Brownings, so it is not our fault if we are not both witty and 
poetical." To her "the outside of Rome," as she puts it, 
" was worth all the inside." She loved to ride or drive over 
the Campagna, and with a party of intimate friends, Leighton, 
Ampere (a member of the French Institute), the Brownings, 
Hatty Hosmer and others, to have luncheon " in the midst of 
all that was lovely in nature and picturesque in the ruined 
remains of Roman power," a description that brings to mind 
the setting of Browning's Love among the Ruins. 

Thackeray's daughters, who were domiciled hard by in the 
Via delle Croce, spent many evenings with Mrs. Browning, 
when her husband was out paying visits. It is one of them, 
now Lady Ritchie, who has recounted an incident in which 
the other Kemble sister, Adelaide Sartoris, figures. Mrs. 
Sartoris, once a pritna donna in grand opera, was artistic as 
well as musical, and an excellent hostess. To her house all 
the best elements of the Anglo-American colony in Rome 
gravitated. One afternoon she had been reading aloud to 
several friends from Christmas Eve and Easter Day, Upon 
the reading an eager discussion ensued, in the midst of which 
the author entered. The disputed passage was referred to 
him, but he evaded his questioners and turned the conversa- 
tion. " He never much cared," the narrative ends, " to talk 
of his own poetry." ^ 

To Lockhart, the veteran critic, who had come abroad in 
search of health, he probably talked, by preference, of any 
other subject. The two men liked and saw a good deal of one 
another. Once they spent a day at Frascati together, when, 
Browning owns, Lockhart's temper " got a pain in it " before 
the afternoon was over.^ But allowance had to be made, for 

' Further Records, vol. ii. p. i8o. Fanny Kemble is described by Mrs. 
Browning as " looking magnificent still, with her black hair and radiant smile." 
She was then thirty-eight. Hers, it appears, was a beauty which bade defiance 
to time. On his way home from calling upon her, thirty-two years later, Browning 
met Domett ; and on Domett's recalling her Juliet, and how handsome she used 
to look, with her great expressive black eyes, "Yes," said Browning, "and how 
handsome she is still." 

- Records of Teftnyson, Ruskin, and Browning, by Lady Ritchie, p. 195. 
With his intimates, however, he would occasionally do so. See Robert Browning, 
Personalia, by Edmund Gosse, p. 91. 

' W. W. Story, ut supra, vol. i. p. 285. 



AT WORK AGAIN 195 

Lockhart was anything but well. In April he went home to 
Abbotsford, and died before the year was out. 

Old friends were met in Rome as well as new acquaint- 
ances made : Geraldine Bate, now become Mrs. Macpherson, 
and, seen again after half a score of years, M. de Ripert- 
Monclar, to whom Paracelsus was dedicated, who would 
admit no change in the appearance of his former comrade. 
Something must be allowed for Gallic complaisance, for 
Browning had shaved his beard on the morning of his arrival 
in Rome, and when it grew again it was tinged with grey.^ 
The Marshalls claimed acquaintance as friends of Tennyson, 
Lady Oswald as Lady Elgin's sister-in-law ; certainly there 
was no lack of sociability. 

But Penini, to whose lot a goodly number of children's 
parties had fallen, became ill and lost his roses ; and his need 
of change chimed in with Mrs. Browning's own preference for 
Florence. Thither, in the later days of May, 1854, they 
returned, again enjoying the vettura journey. They had 
intended to visit England this year, but the financial fates 
forbade, rendering impracticable even a summer flight to the 
mountains. But there were compensations. Penini recovered 
his roses, and there was " no place in the world like Florence 
after all." At Rome their plan had been "to work and play 
by turns," but the social claims of the place proved exacting, 
and work hardly got its fair share. ** I am trying," Browning 
writes to Story on the eleventh of June, " to make up for 
wasted time in Rome by setting my poetical house in order." ^ 
Once more, accordingly, the " hermit life " was resumed, upon 
which other hermits, Lytton and Frederick Tennyson in 
particular, were licensed to intrude. Not, we gather, in the 
mornings, for then husband and wife sat down regularly after 
breakfast, in different rooms, to write poetry.^ As the 
winter drew on — the Crimean winter — Browning, like many 
another Englishman, was full of intense wrath at the mis- 
management which condemned our troops to avoidable 
sufferings. With the new year he had a trouble that touched 

* " It grew whitey" his wife writes. But in Fisher's portrait there appears the 
merest dash of grey. 

^ W. IV. Story, ut supra, vol, i. p. 288, 
' Lady Ritchie's Records, etc., ut supra. 



196 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

him more nearly, for his wife fell ill with the worst chest 
attack she had so far experienced in Italy. Nursed devotedly 
by her husband, she weathered the storm ; but her recovery 
found her the poorer by the loss of her great friend and 
constant correspondent, Miss Mitford, who died in January. 

At the approach of summer the homeward journey was 
at last feasible. Browning had "set his poetical house in 
order " to some purpose, for his Men and Women, save only 
the One Word More, was finished. Good progress, also, had 
been made with Aurora Leigh. So, in the second week in 
June, 1855, they arrived in London once more, "bringing 
their sheaves with them." 



CHAPTER XII 
LATER MARRIED YEARS 

Men and Women — Personal utterances — Sources of certain of the 
poems — Inadequate recognition — Spiritualism — Mrs. Browning a believer 
— Her husband's attitude — D. D. Home — Sdance at Ealing — Browning's 
anger — Tennyson and Maud — Migration to Paris — Mrs. Browning's last 
stay in London — A family group at Ventnor — Aurora Leigh — Deaths of 
John Kenyon and Mr. Barrett — Mrs. Browning's sorrow — Her anxieties 
at Bagni di Lucca — Visit to Paris and Havre — A stormy passage — 
Alarmist rumours — Florence — Rome — High hopes for Italy — Napoleon's 
intervention — Victories of Magenta and Solferino — Armistice of Villa- 
franca — Mrs. Browning's disappointment and illness — Browning under- 
takes the care of Landor — With the Storys at Siena — Poems before 
Congress — Death of Mrs. Browning's sister — Browning modelling in 
Story's studio — Declining health of Mrs. Browning — Her grief at 
Cavour's death — Her own death at Florence. 



T 



HE waning summer moon 

" bom late in Florence 
Dying now impoverished here in London," ^ 



found the Brownings settled at 13, Dorset Street, where 
One Word More, the Epilogue to Men and Women, was 
composed. There is no answering dimness in the devotion 
which illumines this poem with so uniform and clear a light. 
For once Browning speaks in his own " true person." Some- 
thing of what his wife was to him is here manifested ; more, 
imagination aiding, is to be inferred. He has limned her 
outward semblance also ; for it is she who in By the Fireside 
sits 

" Musing by firelight, that great brow 
And the spirit-small hand propping it : " 

' One Word More, Stanza 17. 



198 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

and, slight as the sketch is, it is both in itself crowded with 
suggestion, and superlatively valuable because of its origin. 

Men and Women, appearing in two volumes towards the 
close of this year 1855, must have been especially welcome to 
those readers whom the earlier Dramatic Lyrics and Romances 
had captivated. To Fox, his first literary mentor, Browning 
read the proofs. The new poems, both in subjects and treat- 
ment, are closely akin to the old. It is a case rather of 
development than of difference ; the range has widened and 
the depth of thought is more consistent. This kinship 
their author himself recognized ; for in the next issue of his 
collected works, that of 1 863, the three series are intermingled 
and their contents redistributed, an arrangement maintained 
with slight alterations, in all subsequent editions. 

The clearly personal utterances of The Guardian Angel 
and One Word More need to be supplemented by the story 
told in By the Fireside, where the veil of disguise is of the 
slightest. It is only natural to believe that the wonderful 
description of the coming of love therein contained was 
rooted in the poet's own experience ; though the scene has 
been shifted from London to a gorge in the Apennines. Just 
such a ruined chapel as that of the poem lies beside the 
mountain path to Prato Fiorito ; and by it the Brownings 
had passed in pleasant company, two summers earlier. Story's 
account of the expedition serves to identify the spot. " After 
climbing an hour," he writes, "we arrived at a little old 
church near which the view was magnificent." ^ 

Elsewhere in these volumes the poet prefers, as is his 
manner, to be " dramatic," to speak 

" as Lippo, Roland or Andrea." 

Cleon, the completed Saul, an Epistle, and Bishop Blougram's 
Apology may be regarded as offshoots of that deeper mood 
which had abundantly blossomed in Christmas Eve and Easter 
Day, though they are by no means charged with his latest 
thoughts on Christianity. Childe Roland is, like The Flight 
of the Dnchess, pure romance. The story is quite in keeping 
with Edgar's whirling words, and is invested with no small 
measure of that horror which pervades King Lear. There, it 

• W. W, story., lit stipm, vol. i. p. 273. 




STATUE OF DUKE FERDINAND 
(annunciata piazza, Florence) 

THE STATUE IS THE WORK OF GIOVANNI DA BOLO(;XA, OR " JOHN OF DOUAY," AS HE IS OFTEN 
CALLED. THIS IS THE ".STATUE" OF THE " STATUE AND THE BUST 



"MEN AND WOMEN" 199 

may be submitted, lies the true inspiration of the poem.^ The 
Twhis, on the contrary, originated from sympathy with hard 
realities. Written with a charitable object, it had appeared 
in print a year earlier. It came out, between the same covers 
with Mrs. Browning's Plea for the Ragged Schools of London, 
in pamphlet form, and was sold at a bazaar promoted by 
Miss Arabel Barrett in aid of a refuge for young destitute 
girls which she had founded ; " the first of its kind, I believe," 
Browning wrote in 1882, "and still in existence." ^ 

Many of the " Men and Women " are of no particular age 
or country ; but in those cases where an episode of some 
soul's history is given a local habitation, Italy easily pre- 
dominates. There is but one glimpse, in De Giistihiis, of 
scenery peculiarly English ; to modern Paris is allotted 
Respectability, to mediaeval Paris The Heretic's Tragedy ; 
while at least thirteen poems have an Italian setting. Of 
these Venice claims one, A Toccata of Galuppi's ; Rome two, 
Holy-Cross Day and Tivo in the Campagna ; Florence four, 
Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, The Statue and the Bust 
and Old Pictures ; while three, By the Fireside, Up at a Villa, 
and A Serenade at tJte Villa, the two last in descending 
degrees of probability, may be ascribed to the Bagni di Lucca 
country. Fano and Ancona have, as we have seen, their 
tribute ; while the 



and the 



" castle, precipice-encurled. 
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine," 



" sea-side house to the farther South, 
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth," 



of De Gustibus are such recurrent types that it were rash to 
attempt to fix their identity. But it is at least curious to 
observe the proportion maintained in the distribution of these 
poems, where Florence, the author's chief abiding-place in 
Italy, gets the largest share, and the rest in their several 

* This suggestion is offered not without knowledge of Mrs. Orr's comment 
{Handbook, p. 274), which mentions as contributory causes a tower seen in the 
Carrara mountains, a painting observed in Paris, and the figure of a horse in a 
piece of tapestry in tbo pc>et'<= own house. 

- Wise, ul iupru, vol. ii. p. 6. 



200 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

degrees. It is mostly to the Italian poems, too, that belong 
certain fragments of literary history, which deserve remem- 
brance. Of especial interest is the genesis of Andrea del 
Sarto. The facts upon which this poem is a commentary 
are beyond dispute. The " faultless painter," dragged back- 
wards by weakness of character, strongly appealed to 
Browning's imagination ; but the match which fired the train 
was a portrait of Andrea and his wife, painted by the artist 
himself, which hangs in the Pitti palace. Kenyon had asked 
Browning to procure him a copy of this picture. None was 
to be had ; so Browning wrote his Andrea del Sarto, and sent 
it to his friend instead, who, it is to be hoped, this time found 
the poetry neither " muddy " nor " metaphysical " ! Again, 
Lippo's " Coronation of the Virgin," which is in the Academia 
delle Belle Arti at Florence, cannot be dissociated from Fra 
Lippo Lippi, being, in fact, the very painting whose execution 
is foreshadowed at the close of that poem. Lippo figures in 
one of the Imaginary Conversations of Walter Savage Landor, 
of whose writings Browning was a consistent admirer ; " I 
know no finer reading than Landor," he once said.^ But his 
treatment of the subject is all his own, and nowhere is one 
article of his artistic creed more cogently expressed : — 

" The world's no blot for us, 
Nor blank, it means intensely and means good ; 
To find its meaning is my meat and drink." - 

A French critic (M. Etienne) questioned the poet's accuracy 
in making Fra Lippo the Master and Masaccio (called Guidi 
in the poem) the pupil, but Browning defended his opinion. 
The point, in fact, was and remains a moot one. Somewhat 
similarly a writer in the Daily News of 20 November, 1874, 
denied the existence of " the doctrine of the enclitic De " ; 
but him Browning easily overthrew on the authority of Curtius 
and Buttman. On the other hand, a couple of minute errors 
escaped his notice. In Transcendentalism the celebrated 
mystic was accidentally described as " Swedish Boehme," 
" German " being substituted in later editions ; ^ and in One 

^ Lady Ritchie, ut supra, p. 239. 

' Similarly in the Introduction to the Shelley letters, he had written : "The 

world is not to be learned and thrown aside, but to be reverted to and re-learned." 

* Browning's attention was apparently not called to this error until 1866. He 




o < 

< o 

CO 5 

Q H 

Z z 



INADEQUATE RECOGNITION 201 

Word More the name Karshook crept in where Karshish was 
intended. This mistake arose very naturally. In 1854 
Browning wrote a couple of brief poems (twenty lines in all) 
called Ben Karshook's Wisdom, which appeared in The Keep- 
sake — it was the era of " annuals " and " books of beauty " — 
two years afterwards, and the similarity of the two names 
begat confusion. ^^ Karshish is the proper word," he wrote, 
in 1 88 1, "referring as it does to him of the * Epistle.' " Not 
only did he not include Ben Karshook's Wisdom in any 
edition of his works, but he seems to have disliked the lines, 
speaking of them as " the snarling verses I remember to have 
written, but forget for whom." ^ 

Packed as they are with observation, thought, and humour, 
a pageant as vivid and as various as life itself, the two volumes 
of Men and Women failed to win anything like an adequate 
recognition from the public or the critics. There were, of 
course, exceptions, and the few who, like D. G. Rossetti, W. 
Bell Scott, and Robert Lytton, did admire them, felt the 
enthusiasm of devotees.^ But Browning's conquests extended 
as yet over a very narrow territory. A generation which 
absorbed four editions of the poems of Alexander Smith, 
that light of the " spasmodic " school, in as many years, asked 
for no re-issue of Men and Women. To the end of Browning's 
Florentine days, we are assured, the society which surrounded 
him did not consider him a great poet, or the equal of his 
wife.^ 

Of published criticisms that of Milsand {Revue Contem- 
poraire, September, 1856) was again the most appreciative 
and the most instructive. The sharp distinction between 
what is subjective and objective in poetry may more easily 
be maintained in theory than exemplified in practice. This 
Browning must himself have recognized, in any consideration 

explained to a correspondent that he had been disturbed when at work on the 
poem by an accident to his wife's maid. Wise, ut supra, Second Series, vol. i. 
p. 17. 

' Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 71. They are undeniably forcible, however. See 
Appendix A. 

« "Blougram's Apology," wrote W. Bell Scott to W. M. Rossetti, "and the 
Syrian Doctor's letter are beyond all inventions he has yet done." Ruskin, 
Rossetti, Prerapkaelitism : Papers, 1854-1862, p. 134 ; edited by W. M. Rossetti. 

' Lryi' of F. P. Cable, by Herself, ch. xiv. Miss Cobbe could not, she says, 
read his poetry. 



202 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

of his Men and Women as a whole ; and his critic shrewdly 
offers a very probable explanation of the working, in this 
matter, of the poet's mind. " Mr. Browning," he writes, 
"sympathizes equally with both sources of inspiration, and 
I am inclined to think that his constant endeavour has 
been to reconcile and combine them, so as to be, not in turn, 
but simultaneously, lyrical and dramatic, subjective and 
objective. . . . His poetry would have us conceive of the 
inner significance of things by making us see their exteriors." 
Thus it appears, on comparing this passage with Milsand's 
earlier estimate, that the poet has developed, and the critic 
with him. 

One other review of these volumes which appeared in the 
Roman Catholic Rambler of January, 1856, must be noticed. 
Browning admitted years afterwards to Gavan Duffy, his 
early admirer, that Bishop Blougram was intended to suggest 
Cardinal Wiseman, the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of 
Westminster.^ He would not allow the validity of Duffy's 
contention that the Cardinal had been treated ungenerously ; 
nor need Wiseman himself be supposed to have felt any 
resentment, for the article in the Rambler is quite good- 
natured, and it is his. True there is something about its 
concluding words which reminds us of the position of the 
scorpion's sting. " If Mr. Browning is a man of will and 
action, and not a mere dreamer and talker, ive should never 
feel surprise at his conversion." 

" Try, will our table turn ? " says the speaker in A Lover's 
Quarrel. It had refused to turn at Casa Guidi in 1853, when 
the Brownings and Lytton tried the experiment ; but " we 
were impatient," writes Mrs. Browning, "and Robert was 
playing Mephistopheles, as Mr. Lytton says." Spiritualism 
crossed the Atlantic in the fifties, and became the rage in the 
chief cities of Europe. To Mrs. Browning and many of her 
friends in Florence the prospect of intercourse with departed 
spirits, whether expressing themselves by rapping upon tables 
or otherwise, was of supreme moment. Enthusiasm paralyzed, 
for a time at any rate, their critical faculty. With Browning 

* My Life in Two Hemispheres^ by Gavan Duffy, vol. ii. p. 258. Wiseman 
was a man of very varied intellectual interests. He wrote and lectured on social, 
literary, and artistic subjects, and always got a deservedly attentive hearing. 



HOME, THE "MEDIUM" 203 

it was otherwise. He was a difficult subject, in fact, for 
any sort of " conversion " ; nor was he the more amenable 
for the discovery, later on, that one of his Florentine friends, 
the artist Seymour Kirkup, whom he mentions in Pacchiarotto, 
one of the most simple-minded of learned men, had been 
grossly taken in by a supposed "medium." Sturdily, but 
with complete good-humour, he maintained an attitude of 
scepticism ; as, for example, at Lytton's villa at Bellosguardo, 
whither the attache had migrated after the marriage and 
departure from Florence of his house-mate, Drummond Wolff, 
when his host, Frederick Tennyson, Powers, Mrs. Browning, 
and others were all arrayed against him. He was, however, 
interested, if sceptical ; and, when an opportunity for further 
investigation presented itself, he was not the man to decline it. 

It happened that there arrived in England in 1855, a 
couple of months before the Brownings' return, one Daniel D. 
Home, the most noted of the American mediums. Home 
speedily became a lion. His seances were attended by such 
men as Lord Brougham, Sir David Brewster, the Lyttons. 
father and son, and, at a later date, the present Lord Dun- 
raven. The Brownings, though certainly not from identical 
motives, determined to test his quality. Accordingly they 
were present, in July, at a seance which he held at the house 
of a Mr. Rymer at Ealing, where he was staying. The 
Rymer children had gathered some clematis, of which Home 
and Miss Rymer made a wreath ; which wreath, opportunely 
enough, it must be admitted, since two poets were expected, 
was left upon a table in the room where the sitting was to be 
held. At any rate the hint, if such it was, was taken, for 
presently " spirit hands " lifted the wreath and placed it upon 
Mrs. Browning's head. 

Browning firmly believed, as he told Nathaniel Hawthorne 
several years later, that the so-called " spirit hands " were 
fastened to the feet of the medium, who lay back in his chair 
with his legs stretched far under the table.^ At the time he 
said nothing ; but a couple of days later he wrote to Mrs. 
Rymer asking for a second seance, and for leave to bring his 
friend Miss Helen Faucit with him. The request was refused, 
on the plea of other engagements. Shortly afterwards Home, 

' Nathaniel Hawthorne's Note- Books, ii. p. lO. 



204 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

in company with Mrs. Rymer and her son, called on the 
Brownings in Dorset Street. Browning lost no time in 
informing Mrs. Rymer that he was profoundly dissatisfied 
with what he had seen at her house, and on Home's inter- 
vening gave him clearly to understand that he believed him 
guilty of a fraud. Home left the house rather precipitately. 
The " spirit-hands " had previously aroused the suspicions 
of a Mr. Merrifield and of Miss de Gaudrian, afterwards his 
wife ; and the latter, hearing of the Brownings' visit to 
Ealing, wrote to Mrs. Browning to ask her opinion. Both 
husband and wife replied, he at some length and in the third 
person. He is " hardly able to account for the fact," he writes, 

" that there can be any other opinion than his own on the matter 
— that being that the whole display of ' hands,' ' spirit utterances,' etc., 
was a cheat and an imposture. He believes in the good faith of 
his host and hostess, and was sorry that they were taken in." 

He goes on to lament the fact that "the best and rarest 
of natures " may be led eventually to 

" a voluntary prostration of the whole intelligence before what is 
assumed to transcend all intelligence. Once arrived at this point no 
trick is too gross — absurdities are referred to ' low spirits,' falsehoods 
to 'personating spirits,' and the one terribly apparent spirit, the 
Father of Lies, has it all his own way. Mr. Browning had some 
difficulty in keeping from an offensive expression of his feelings at 
the Rymers ; he has since seen Mr. Home and relieved himself." 

In conclusion he does not advise any formal exposure, 
preferring " to leave the business to its natural termination." 
Mrs. Browning adds a covering note : 

" I enclose to you in his handwriting an account of the impressions 
he received. Mine, I must frankly say, were entirely different." 

These letters did not get into print until 28 November, 
1902, when they appeared in the Literary Supplement of the 
Times. They evoked an interesting communication from 
Mr. Robert Barrett Browning, the " Penini " of old days. 

After corroborating the story told to Hawthorne, with 
the addition that he had repeatedly heard his father describe 

Incidents in My Life., by D. D. Home, second series, ch. iv. 



BROWNING^S INDIGNATION 205 

how he caught hold of Home's foot under the table, when 
that member was nefariously at work, he proceeds : 

" What I am more desirous of stating is that towards the end of her 
life my mother's views on ' spirit manifestations ' were much modi- 
fied. The change was brought about, in a great measure, by the 
discovery that she had been duped by a friend in whom she had 
blind faith. The pain of the disillusion was great, but her eyes were 
opened and she saw clearly." ^ 

The language of Robert Browning's letter to Miss de 
Gaudrian is that of indignation, and from this time forward 
it is plain that he had small patience with spiritualism ; ^ 
while from his son's it is to be inferred that Mrs. Browning 
continued, until the episode therein narrated, to hold a 
divergent view. Nevertheless she displays a rather more 
critical attitude. There is significance in her admission to 
one of her correspondents that " Mediums cheat certainly," 
on occasion ; and in her request to Miss Haworth, who was 
likely to attend a seance, to " tmich the hands." She is less 
positive than formerly, although anxious to be convinced. 
The age was materialistic, and she, with her intense 
spirituality, longed for witness to the reality of the unseen ; 
less, in all probability, for her own satisfaction than that 
others might be won from their materialism. This was an 
aspiration which could not fail to have her husband's deepest 
sympathy ; and their being thus far in agreement must have 
enabled them to differ the more easily as to methods of 
realizing it. Browning's mind was not naturally prone to 
compromise, but he had too deep a respect for his wife's 
genius and individuality to desire to coerce her opinions. 

* The Times, Literary Supplement, 5 December, 1902. 

* There is a consensus of testimony on this point. D. G. Rossetti, Rudolf 
Lehmann, Miss Cobbe, Miss Corkran, and Lady Ritchie all tell the same tale. 
Mrs. David Ogilvy (in a memoir prefixed to Messrs. F. Warne and Co.'s edition 
of Mrs. Browning's poems) recalls a conversation on the subject in Dorset Street, 
at which she was present. " And what does it all end in ? " said Browning. " In 
your finding yourself in a locked room, and the keeper putting in his head, and 
asking what you will be pleased to have for dinner ! " " What," he said, not long 
afterwards in Paris to Mrs. Corkran, "a clever woman like you to be taken in 
by such humbugs and charlatans ! " And Miss Cobbe writes (in her Lije, 
ch. xiv.) : " I have seen him stamping on the floor in a frenzy of rage at the way 
some believers and mediums were deceiving Mrs. Browning." This would be in 
i86a 



2o6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

They could and did agree to differ about spiritualism, as they 
agreed to differ about the character of Louis Napoleon. 
"Here is even Robert," writes Mrs. Browning on i6 June, 
i860, " whose heart softens to the point of letting me have the 
Spiritual Magazine from England." Then follows a passage 
which admits a breath of fresh air into a rather hothouse 
atmosphere — the picture of Seymour Kirkup, who was as 
deaf as a post, trying to convert Landor to spiritualism, and 
of Landor, "his beautiful sea-foam of a beard all in a curl 
and white bubblement of beauty," laughing so loudly in reply 
that even Kirkup heard him.^ 

For Home, Browning did not choose to seek to expose him ; 
suspected by many, he remained unexposed to the end of his 
career.^ But Mr. Sludge, the " Medium," written in retro- 
spect, after Browning's manner, and published in the Dramatis 
Persona; of 1864, is a merciless indictment of the man's 
character and pretensions, under the usual thin disguise of 
different circumstances and locality. Home himself, follow- 
ing the lead of the newspaper press, recognized that he was 
attacked ; for in his Incidents i7t my Life he has a chapter 
called " Sludge the Medium — Mr. Robert Browning — Fancy 
Portraits." ^ It is only fair to add that the poem is hardly 
less severe on those persons who wilfully encouraged " Mr. 
Sludge " to deceive them than on " Mr. Sludge " himself. 

The house in Dorset Street, which witnessed the rather 
stormy interview with Home, was shortly afterwards the scene 
of an episode calculated to blot out all such unpleasant 
recollections. A first edition copy of Maud, the gift of 
Tennyson to Browning, is a memento of an evening which 
deserves to be reckoned among the great occasions of literary 
history. It is not often that four poets are gathered together 

' Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, vol. ii. p. 395. 

* T. A. Trollope, with whom Home stayed a month at Florence, has recorded 
the growing doubt with which he and his friends regarded him ( What I remember, 
p. 268). Sir Francis Burnand, who was present at one of his stances and had a 
long conversation with him afterwards, could not make up his mind " whether 
Home's 'spirits ' were ' above ' or ' below ' proof," but appears to incline towards 
the latter view {Records and Reminiscences, one vol. edition, p. 331). 

» Incidents in my Life, Second Series, ch. iv. There is a contemptuous ttki- 
ence'wi Prince H'ohenstiel-Sch-iVanga2i (1871) to "friend Home's stilts and tongs 
and medium-ware." 



A SESSION OF POETS 207 

within the four walls of one room ; but so it was now, when 
to an audience that included the Brownings and D. G. Ros- 
setti, Tennyson 

'* read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, 
Deep-chested music," 

his lately published monodrama. Meanwhile Rossetti, 
unobserved in his corner, made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of 
the reader, which he gave to his host ; who, when Maud was 
finished, read aloud his own Fra Lippo Lippi} Verily, the 
scene sends our thoughts backward to the " wit combats " 
of the Mermaid Tavern. " The tete-d-tetc conversations 
between Browning and my father," wrote the present Lord 
Tennyson of their intercourse in later years, "when no one but 
myself was with them, was the best talk I ever heard, so full of 
repartee, quip, epigram, anecdote, depth and wisdom ; but it 
is quite impossible to attempt to reproduce them owing to 
their very brilliancy." ^ A sigh for the limitations of humanity 
escapes one. In Dorset Street it was not all head work, 
either. " He [Tennyson] opened his heart to us," writes Mrs. 
Browning ; and one can imagine how theirs leapt to meet it 
In other respects their London experiences closely re- 
sembled those of their last visit. There was a renewal of 
intercourse with Ruskin, Leighton, Carlyle, Kinglake, Forster, 
the Kemble sisters, and the Procters. There were invitations 
to the country which again, owing to the care of their child 
and the expense that would have been entailed, had to be 
declined. Together they visited Browning's old haunt, the 
Dulwich Gallery, in company with a new acquaintance, 
Russell Lowell ; to whom the poet pointed out, as they stood 
before the " Jacob's Dream " of Rembrandt, that " some reeds 
behind Jacob had evidently been scratched in with the handle 
of the brush, showing how rapidly it had been painted."^ 
Many callers came to Dorset Street, and the pressure of social 
engagements weighed heavily upon Mrs. Browning. Brown- 
ing sat to Rossetti for his portrait, corrected the proofs of 

' Mr. W. M. Rossetti was also present : Some Reminiscences of W. M, Rossetti 
p. 236. See also Wise, ut supra. Second Series, vol. i. p. 92. 
' Tennyson, A Memoir, vol. ii. p. 229. 
' J. R. Lowell, Utters, vol. i. p. 261. 



208 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Men and Women, and found he had too much to do. Both 
were glad to migrate to Paris in October, hoping, in the 
husband's words, for "blessed quietude after the London 
worry." But the expectation was not realized immediately. 
He writes in the same letter : " We are in little inconvenient 
rooms here" — 102, Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St. Germain, 
facing east — " and I have been in continual hot water, the 
landlady, a Baronne, profiting by the blunder of an over- 
zealous friend, who took the apartment against my direct 
orders. But the water is getting tepid now, and we shall do 
well enough in time, it is to be hoped. ... I have lain perdu 
and seen nobody." ^ Perhaps the water grew hot again ; at 
any rate before Christmas they are found established in new 
quarters, 3, Rue du Colisee, off the Champs-Elys^es, "as 
pleased as if we had never lived in a house before." Here 
there was no lack of room or sunshine. Mrs. Browning, on 
recovering from an attack of illness which had added to the 
discomforts of the Rue de Grenelle, worked hard at Aurora 
Leigh, and Browning set himself the task of remoulding 
Sordello, but could not achieve it to his satisfaction. Feeling, 
it may be, that his hand was out, he gave it new employment, 
taking to drawing in his spare time. He could not, on 
Mrs. Browning's testimony, find much relief from serious work 
in light literature ; " so," she writes, " while I lie on the sofa 
and rest in a novel, Robert has a resource in his drawing." 
Nothing much was stirring in the political or social life of 
Paris, and the winter passed quietly. Flush, the spaniel, it is 
pleasant to learn, was still in the land of the living. 

Early in the year 1856 an heir was born to Louis 
Napoleon. Browning was among the spectators of the 
baptism of the infant prince in June, and on his way 
homeward, 

" Walking the heat and headache off," 

found himself confronted by the Morgue. It is to what he 
saw there that we owe Apparent Failure, a poem which was a 
favourite, its author told Domett, with Tennyson. 

Since the spring the poet and his wife had been rendered 
anxious by the illness of their constant friend, John Kenyon. 

' To D. G. Rossetti. Wise, tU supra, vol. i. pp. 20-21. 



"AURORA LEIGH" 209 

Late in June he put his house, 39, Devonshire Place, at their 
disposal, he himself being absent in the Isle of Wight. The 
measure of Mr. Barrett's continued resentment may be 
gauged by the fact that on learning of their arrival in London 
he promptly sent his family away to the seaside. To the not 
unpleasant exile of Ventnor the Brownings, at Arabel Barrett's 
entreaty, followed them in September, where Penini speedily 
won his way into his uncles' hearts. They encouraged him 
to stand up for his rights, more Britannico, and applauded 
when he confronted a child of twice his age, who had taken 
liberties with him. This family scene is vividly described 
by his mother : — 

" Robert and I begged to suggest to the hero that the ' boy of 
twelve ' might have killed him if he had pleased. ' Never mind,' cried 
little Pen, ' there would have been somebody to think of vie^ who 
would have him hanged ' (great applause from the uncles). ' But 
you would still be dead,' said Robert, remorselessly. ' Well, I don't 
care for that. It was a beautiful place to die in — close to the sea.' " ^ 

From Ventnor the Brownings joined Kenyon at West 
Cowes, where the kindness of their host, whose days were 
evidently numbered, touched them deeply. Under the roof 
of this dear "cousin " and " friend " the last pages of Aurora 
Leigh were written ; and when at the close of October, after 
a visit to Mrs. Surtees Cook at Taunton, they were preparing 
to start for the South, it was in his London home that 
Mrs. Browning dedicated to him this, the most considerable 
of her works. The painter, Ruskin has said, should give his 
picture, the poet his poem. Mrs. Browning had no truer, 
wiser friend than John Kenyon, and she gave him of 
her best. 

The first news that reached her after the return to 
Florence was of the great and immediate success of her poem. 
The press was uniformly friendly, and private letters, among 
them a long one from Leigh Hunt, were enthusiastic. The 
book sold so well that a second edition was required within a 
fortnight. Browning, who had never paid much attention to 
what the critics said about his own work, was enraptured at 
his wife's triumph. Miss Cobbe, who travelled from Venice 

' Letters of Elizabeth Barrdt Browning, vol. ii. p. 238. 
P 



210 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

to Florence on purpose to present letters of introduction to 
the woman who could write Aurora Leigh^ and joined forces, 
as has been said, with Miss Blagden, records that he came 
constantly to their villa, "glorying in his wife's fame, 
continually bringing up good reviews of her poem, and re- 
counting the editions called for."^ The career of Mrs. 
Browning as a writer was now unquestionably at its zenith. 
Unhappily sorrow followed closely upon the heels of success. 
The loss, in December, of the friend to whom Aurora Leigh 
was dedicated was a genuine grief, though devoid of all 
bitterness. John Kenyon proved himself consistent in 
generosity. Since the birth of the Brownings' son he had 
insisted, though Browning was unwilling to have it so, on 
allowing them ^loo a year ; now by his will he left them 
eleven thousand pounds. But the death of Mrs. Browning's 
father four months later, on 17 April, 1857, was a blow at the 
heart. She had given up all hope of reconciliation ; yet her 
natural grief renewed and intensified every pang which her 
father's unnatural cruelty had cost her. The shock was one 
which could not fail to be detrimental to so frail an organism. 

Alia Villa once more received the Brownings in its welcome 
coolness, when the July heat of 1857 made Florence un- 
tenable. Browning and his boy took delight in scouring the 
hills on mountain ponies, and bathed daily in the Lima. But 
anxiety marred the success of this holiday. Robert Lytton , 
who was repeating his earlier visit to the Brownings, fell ill 
with gastric fever. For some days his condition was serious, 
and Browning watched by his friend's bedside four nights out 
of five. Hardly had Lytton become convalescent and left for 
the Villa Bricchieri with Miss Blagden, when Penini was 
similarly attacked ; and though his illness ran a favourable 
course, and was less severe than Lytton's, it was a further 
strain upon his mother's health and spirits, which, it now 
began to appear, where losing their former elasticity. Her 
energy as a correspondent flagged at this period, though later 
it was to revive in the stress of Italy's renewed struggles for 
unity. The care of her child's education absorbed her more 
active hours, while Browning supervised his music. 

They had nourished schemes of visiting Egypt and the 

' Life of Frances Power Cobbe, by Herself ch. xiv. 



NAPOLEON III. AND ITALY 211 

Holy Land this winter ; but recent anxieties had unfitted 
Mrs. Browning for travel. To Florence, accordingly, they 
returned in October, when the mountain air became too cold. 
But Florence could be cold also. For the first time in ten 
years there were fragments of ice upon the Arno's surface, 
and " grippe " invaded Casa Guidi. Mrs. Browning escaped, 
but was physically at a low ebb. Presently all Florence was 
startled by the news of Orsini's attempt upon Napoleon's 
life. To Mrs. Browning the Emperor had become " the only 
great man of his age, speaking of public men " ; already she 
looked to him as the destined liberator of Italy,^ and she was 
proportionately indignant. But Italy had still to wait. No 
other public event of moment disturbed Florence from its 
wonted calm ; nor does any salient incident appear to have 
varied, at this period, the quiet family life of Casa Guidi. 

When the season for summer migration came, France was 
their objective. " The scene changes," Mrs. Browning writes — 

"No more cypresses, no more fireflies, no more dreaming repose 
on burning hot evenings. Push out the churches, push in the 
boulevards." 

They chose the sea route to Marseilles, and there rested a 
night : onward thence by express trains, breaking the journey 
at Lyons and at Dijon. At Dijon an episode occurred which 
illustrates Browning's deep affection for Milsand ; twice he 
went and stood before his friend's house, " to muse and bless 
the threshold." So Paris was reached and the Hotel 
Hyacinthe, Rue St. Honors, where they passed a fortnight. 
Browning, himself invigorated by the keener air, had the 
comfort of finding his father, on whose birthday they arrived, 
" looking ten years younger, and radiant with joy at seeing him 
and Penini." There were meetings with Father Prout, whose 
geniality was unfailing ; with Lady Elgin, robbed of speech 
by paralysis, who could yet express by touch and motion her 
affectionate regard ; and with Charles Sumner, the American 
statesman, who was seeking in Europe for the renewal of 
that health which the brutal assault of a fellow-Congressman 
had undermined. Presently the three generations of Brown- 
ings set out for Normandy. A descent on Etretat proving 

' Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browningy vol, ii. p. 307. 



212 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

ineffective, they found quarters in the outskirts of Havre. 
Mrs. Browning had been recommended sea-bathing, and in 
this respect they were well situated, their house, a large 
and airy one, being close to the sea-shore ; but for Havre 
and its neighbourhood they did not care at all. Mrs. 
Browning's health was benefited, however ; and it was here 
that the photograph was taken, pronounced by her husband 
to be good, which appears as frontispiece to the fourth and 
subsequent editions of Aurora Leighy and is here reproduced.^ 
After eight weeks at Havre they spent other four in Paris, in 
a pleasant apartment close to the Tuileries Gardens — " small, 
but exquisitely comfortable and Parisian " ; ready enough, 
when October came, to turn their faces towards Italy again. 

Preferring to avoid the long sea passage from Marseilles, 
they chose the Mont Cenis route. They travelled slowly, 
the journey occupying nine days. One of them was spent at 
Chamb^ry, that they might visit Les Charmettes, where 
Rousseau in his early days found a refuge with Mme, de 
Warens. Rousseau's romanticism, it may be supposed, the 
" resplendency " and " all-explosive eloquence " commended 
in La Saisiaz, attracted Browning ; of these he thought as he 
sat at the old harpsichord and played the " Dream " upon its 
cracked and faltering keys, and not of its author's pessimistic 
theories : — 

" All that's good is gone and past ; 
Bad and worse still grows the present, and the worst of all comes 
last." 

After a night at Lanslebourg they crossed the Alps. Snow 
had not yet fallen, but the passage caused Mrs. Browning 
some suffering. At Genoa they took ship for Leghorn, and 
had a stormy voyage, of which she has left a graphic 
account. 

" Half way over, the captain almost decided on returning to Genoa. 
We had whirlwinds, called by the Italians burrasca^ and reeled about 
in the sea in our little old Neapolitan boat. The very male pas- 
sengers were somewhat alarmed, and there was an English lady who 
called aloud on God to ' spare her a few more days ' ! " 

' He had it engraved by Barlow, W. M. Rossetti acting as intermediary. 
Ruskin, Rossetti, etc., ut supra, p. 210. 




KI.IZAIiKT}! r.AKRKTT KROWNINC, 1853 



DISTRACTED FRIENDS 213 

After eighteen hours of wretchedness, the travellers were 
glad to rest a night at Leghorn. Meanwhile dismal rumours 
had preceded them to Florence. A friend in Paris, Mme. du 
Quaire, had notified a friend in Florence of the date of their 
departure, 12 October. As the days passed and they did 
not appear, all sorts of conjectures were afloat. 

" Either we had perished by a railway accident on the Marseilles 
route (hinted at in a Galignani), or gone down in a steamer (one or 
two having gone down), or I had died on Mont Cenis and Robert had 
stopped to bury me at Turin. So that certain friends of ours were 
running about in a distracted way with pale faces — one confined to 
her room for four-and-twenty hours with fright. In fact, as I went 
upstairs the first time to our apartment in Casa Guidi I met an 
enquiring friend coming down who stared at me aghast, as at a ghost 
of an old inhabitant of the house haunting the ancient place ! " 

But it was a joy to be at home again. 

" Robert and I are delighted to feel here in a divine abstraction 
from civilized life. Florence looked like a city of the dead to us on 
our arrival. There was one man wandering along the quay (the 
fashionable Lung Arno !) and another man looking at him with 
intense interest. Still, we are acclimatized ; and we begin again to 
live our own lives, one day of which we have not lived for these 
four months." * 

Yet, dear as Casa Guidi was, the winter climate of Rome 
was judged to be better for its mistress than that of Florence ; 
so that for this and the two following winters they are found 
in Rome. 

The start was made within a bare month of their arrival. 
With favourable conditions, a comfortable carriage lent by 
American friends, the Eckleys, and fair weather, the journey 
was a good one. At one spot two oxen-drivers fell out, one 
of them attacking the other with a knife. Browning inter- 
vened, with the happy result that no blood was shed ; though 
at the journey's end a torn garment of his required mending. 
On Christmas Day Mrs. Browning was able to accompany 
him to St. Peter's to hear the silver trumpets ; but then cold 
weather came. Rome was very full, and he was soon carried 
away by the social stream. 

• These extracts are from an unpublished letter. 



214 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

" We are in a crowd," writes Mrs. Browning. " My husband 
is engaged two or three times deep at night for a fortnight 
together. I am saved by being imprisoned in the house by tramon- 
tana. The transition between the scorching sun and tomb-like 
draughts of air makes the danger of Italy, to say nothing of the 
exhalations peculiar to Rome." ^ 

Her husband, however, defying these untoward conditions, 
kept his health and his appetite, thanks in great part to 
long walks with Eckley and to homoeopathy. " No Men 
and Women,'' writes Mrs, Browning. " Men and women from 
without instead ! " But indeed, the state of political affairs, 
quite apart from social distractions, was such as to monopolize 
the thoughts of those who had high hopes for Italy. 

The decade which followed the battle of Novara had been 
to that country, outside the King of Sardinia's dominions, a 
period of constant repression, of dull pain, of acute and 
occasionally articulate suffering. In 185 1 Mr. Gladstone 
wrote of " Bomba's " rule in the Two Sicilies that it was " the 
negation of God created into a system of government." At 
the Paris Congress of 1856 Lord Clarendon denounced the 
misgovernment of the Papal States as a scandal to Europe. 
These were the plague-spots, but the yoke of the foreigner 
weighed heavily upon Lombardy and Venetia, and upon the 
Duchies, while the worst offenders knew that they had the 
moral, and might have the material, force of Austria to 
support them. Nevertheless the oppressed Italians were 
learning in the school of adversity not only how to suffer, but 
how to be strong. In the words of Massimo d'Azeglio, 
the Piedmontese statesman, who called upon the Brownings 
about this time, it was '48 over again, but with matured 
actors. At last the moment :ame. Piedmont must make 
the attempt, but could not make it single-handed. Cavour 
had found an ally in Louis Napoleon, The Emperor of the 
French had a genuine desire to do something for Italy ; he 
was equally bent on humbling Austria. He announced his 
intention of freeing Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic ; and 
when, after various futile negotiations, culminating in a 
demand from Vienna that the forces of Piedmont should 

' From an unpublished letter, dated Rome, 43 Bocca di Leone, January 9 
[1859]. 



VILLAFRANCA 215 

unconditionally disarm, Austrian troops crossed the Ticino, 
they had to reckon with French as well as with Italian 
resistance. Mrs. Browning's enthusiasm for the Emperor 
rose to fever height, and Browning himself was impressed. 
It was at Florence, whither they returned in May, a 
Florence whose Grand Duke had thought it wise to take his 
departure, that she and her husband, both, in her own phrase, 
passionate sympathizers with Italy, heard with delight of the 
victories of Magenta and Solferino. They had begun to 
write on the Italian question together, and designed to publish 
jointly. Triumph, however, soon gave place to bitter disap- 
pointment. Napoleon had fought enough to suit his purpose. 
He had humbled Austria, as he had humbled Russia. Far 
from desiring to incur her inveterate enmity, he schemed, as 
in the earlier case, to win her friendship by a show of 
generosity. Accordingly he concluded an armistice, and met 
the Emperor of Austria in conference at Villafranca. Then 
it was that Browning destroyed what he had written. But 
his wife's faith was more robust. For the moment she was 
stunned ; but presently concluded that her hero had done 
what he could, that the jealousy of interested nations had 
prevented him from doing more. Lombardy was given up, if 
Venetia was retained. She even acquitted him later on, when 
it became known that Savoy and Nice were to be annexed 
by France as the price of his intervention. In one particular, 
however, her political instinct was sound. Napoleon 
" builded better than he knew." " The first battle in the 
north of Italy," she wrote, and wrote truly, " freed Italy 
potentially from North to South." 

But as to the immediate effect of Villafranca : if, as we are 
assured, grown men in Florence fell ill in consequence of the 
peace, it is no wonder that Mrs. Browning's highly strung 
organization was strained almost to breaking. She became 
alarmingly unwell, with pains as of angina added to the 
usual chest troubles. Undoubtedly she had, by her own 
admission, talked too much, and excited herself too much, 
about the war ; but she could not help it. 

" Women don't generally break their hearts on these exterior 
subjects," she writes, "but I am otherwise made. Whatever small 
worth may be in me (among my innumerable weaknesses and 



2i6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

defalcations) arises exactly from the earnestness and thoroughness 
of thought and feeling upon subjects which don't personally touch 
me." 1 

The reed, to which she loved to compare herself, could 
only give forth its music after it had been " hacked and 
hewed." Thus was shaped the musical instrument ; but 

" The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, — 

For the reed which grows nevermore again 

As a reed with the reeds in the river." ^ 

Browning's hands were full during this July of 1859. For 
three weeks his night's rest was sacrificed to attendance on 
his sick wife. He took over, too, his son's lessons ; and in 
the midst of his anxiety found himself faced with a fresh 
responsibility. Walter Savage Landor, now past eighty, had, 
after a long period of estrangement, rejoined his family at 
Fiesole. But the arrangement did not answer. He was 
ungoverned in speech and temper : to live at peace with him 
was not easy. The task, at any rate, proved too difficult for 
his family. Violent quarrels took place. Three times he 
flung himself out of the house, and was as many times 
brought back to it. On the fourth occasion he refused 
absolutely to return. His family, to whom he had made 
over his property, would make no provision for him outside 
their walls. He was now homeless, with nothing but the 
clothes he stood in and a few pauls in his pocket. In this 
plight he appeared at Casa Guidi. Browning at once took 
charge of his affairs, received him into his house, and after a 
few days got him an invitation to stop with the Storys at 
Siena, whither he himself was presently to follow. Mean- 
while, he wrote to Forster, who after corresponding with 
Landor's brothers reported that funds would not be lacking 
to enable this second Lear to keep house independently. His 
was evidently a case where tact could do a great deal ; for to 
those who now befriended him he showed himself gentle and 
affectionate. And indeed he might well do so. 

' From an unpublished letter, dated Rome, 28 Via del Tritone, 31 December 
[1859]. 

- A Musical Instrument, written in Rome in the spring of i860, first published 
in the July Comhill of that year. 




ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, 1859 

FROM THE DRAWING BY FIELD TALFOURD IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 




ROKKRT KROWNINC, 1859 

FROM THE DRAWING BY FrF.I.O TAI.KDUKD IN THE NATIONAL I'OK'TRAIT GALLERY 



AT SIENA 217 

" I have never seen," says an observer, " anything of its kind 
so chivalrous as the deference paid by Robert Browning to Landor. 
It was loyal homage paid by a poet in all the glow of power and 
impulsive magnetism to an old master." ' 

The Brownings reached Siena early in August, Mrs. 
Browning in so weak a state that she had to be carried into 
the house from the vettura. The Villa Alberti, their summer 
house this and the next year, is a roomy house at Marciano, 
two miles out of the city, separated from the road by a six-foot 
wall and taller hedge. From its back windows the towers of 
Siena are visible, and the chime of the bells of the Duomo 
and San Dominico is within hearing. The front faces east, 
and looks across a little valley to a corresponding slope, 
where stand several other villas. One of these, the MisciateUi, 
then called Belvedere, was the Storys' resting-place ; and 
the path which leads through vines and olive-trees from one 
house to the other was much frequented during the next two 
months. The distance by road was longer, some three- 
quarters of a mile ; a favourite gallop with Penini, when off 
to join the Story children. For Browning here bought his 
son a pony, which accompanied them to Rome and later to 
England. Even nearer than the Storys was Landor, who 
was now settled in a small house within a stone's cast of the 
Villa Alberti. The experiment answered fairly well, though 
Browning had often to smooth down the old lion when 
enraged by imaginary grievances ; who found, otherwise, a 
safety-valve in composing Latin Alcaics against his wife and 
Louis Napoleon. Much of his time he spent with the Brown- 
ings and Storys at one or other villa ; appearing at the 
Belvedere on little Edith Story's birthday in a wonderful 
flowered waistcoat given him, years earlier, by Count D'Orsay.^ 
Mrs. Browning made him " laugh carnivorously " by telling 

' Last days of Walter Savage Landor, by Kate Field, Atlantic Monthly, April, 
1866. Landor was not behindhand in gratitude. He wrote to Forster of 
Browning as " the kind friend whom I had seen only three or four times in my 
life, yet who made me the voluntary offer of what money I wanted, and who 
insists on managing my affairs here [Siena] and paying for my lodging and 
sustenance." Walter Savage Landor : a Biography, by John Forster, vol. ii. 
p. 562. 

' W. W. Story, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 19, where there is added a very racy 
account of his conversation, preserved by Mrs. Story. 



2i8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

him that one day, to please her, he would have to write an 
ode in honour of the Emperor. Every evening the friends 
would sit on the lawn under the ilexes and cypresses, talking 
over their tea long after the cool night had fallen. It was 
three or four weeks, indeed, before Mrs. Browning could share 
this pleasure ; she had to content herself, at first, with the 
sunsets visible from her upper room and the night winds 
breathing through her open windows. In the rest and almost 
absolute seclusion of the summer, with but two visitors from 
the outside world, Odo Russell, afterwards Lord Ampthill, and 
Mr. W. C. Cartwright, a Northamptonshire squire, Roman 
friends, she regained a portion of her strength. Yet she 
spoke later of this illness and of " the tendency it proved " as 
making her " feel more than usually mortal." ^ It could not, 
however, weaken her political enthusiasm ; and it was a great 
joy to her, as it was to her husband and the Story s, when one 
September day the cross of Savoy was uncovered in the 
market place of Siena, in token of the formation of a northern 
Italian kingdom under Victor Emmanuel. 

They all left Siena regretfully ; and not remaining in 
P'lorence much longer than to see Landor established in a 
little house in the Via Nunziatina, with Wilson, now married 
to an Italian, Ferdinando Romagnoli, to look after him, they 
settled down in Rome for the winter,^ Society then was 
much restricted, disturbances being feared, and was mainly of 
the diplomatic kind. " My husband," Mrs, Browning writes,^ 

" met yesterday at a dinner of seven the Neapolitan, Portugese and 
English ambassadors, a chief of the Roman Liberals, and a brother- 
in-law of the Princess Mathilde. We know a great deal more than 
we can tell. But things are going beautifully, I thank God, things 
political, that is." 

As an outward sign of enthusiasm twenty thousand Romans 
had combined in a franc subscription for two swords, designed 
by the jeweller Castellani, to be presented to Victor Emmanuel 
and Napoleon. The Pope banned this proceeding, and the 

* From the unpublished letter last quoted, 

' The street has chivnged its name, and Lander's house (where, in 1864, he 
died) is now 93 Via delta Chiesa, Wilson lived until 1902, when she died at 
Asolo. 

" From the unpublished letter last quoted. 



"A MONOLOGUE IN NAPOLEON'S NAME " 219 

swords had to disappear ; but the Brownings were invited 
before that to come and see them. 

" We were received at Castellani's most flatteringly as poets and 
lovers of Italy ; were asked for our autographs ; and returned in a 
blaze of glory and satisfaction." 

Mrs. Browning paid for this expedition by an attack of ill- 
ness, but happily a brief one. She was able to attend to the 
proofs of her Poems before Congress, which constituted her 
comment on the political crisis. 

The little volume appeared early in the new year. It 
aroused, as its author had expected, considerable indignation 
in the English press. To her the very reasonable suspicion 
of Napoleon, which was a factor in our policy, and which had 
evoked in England a wave of enthusiasm for volunteering, 
was most repugnant. Browning also, it appears, though he 
had no confidence in the Emperor's disinterestedness, did not 
give their proper weight to these apprehensions. The " long 
poem " on which his wife mentions that he was occupied this 
winter was certainly a first draft of Prince Hohenstiel- 
Schwangau, as is shown by a letter written to Robert 
Buchanan in 187 1. 

" Why speak at all disparagingly," it runs, " of your poem [Napoleon 
Fallcti], which I am sure is admirable in every way, full of power 
and music ; besides, I see my fancies or fears that you might treat in 
your undoubted right the main actor after a fashion repugnant to my 
feelings were vain enough. I think more savagely now of the man, 
and should say so if needed. I wrote, myself, a monologue in his 
name twelve years ago, and never could bring the printing to my 
mind as yet. One day, perhaps." ^ 

That his wife did not see the poem was in accordance with 
their habitual practice ; for they only showed one another 
their completed work. But the transference of Savoy and 
Nice to France, officially announced in February, was a 
significant commentary on Poems before Congress. Italy, it 
was evident, must now achieve her own destiny unaided. 
On 14 May, Garibaldi and his thousand landed in Sicily, 
which thereupon became the centre of political interest. The 

' Wise, tit supra. Second Series, vol. i. pp. 35-6. The poem appeared, in 
act, at the close of ihe year 187 1. 



220 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

progress of his great adventure, upon which all eyes were 
bent, occupied the thoughts of the Brownings at Rome, at 
Florence, and at Siena. 

Again the cool and quiet of the Villa Albert!, dreaming 
amidst its purple hills and vineyards, its olive-trees and fig- 
trees clothing it as with a forest solitude ; again the Storys 
within hail, again the undertone of the old lion Landor's 
not ill-natured growl, as accompaniment to their lighter talk. 
There were long hours of rest and thought for Mrs. Browning, 
while her husband and son roamed over the country on horse- 
back ; she had, too, the society of Isa Blagden, always a 
" perfect " friend to her. This should have been a happy and 
a renovating summer ; but all was marred by the serious 
illness of Mrs. Surtees Cook. Mrs. Browning longed to go to 
her sister; but that, it was obvious, would have been the 
height of unwisdom. She could only sit still and endure, 
with what faith and hope she might ; while Browning, in the 
kindness of his heart, did his best to reassure her. Her art, 
too, afforded her some solace ; several of her last lyrics upon 
Italy being written during these anxious days. 

In September they returned to Rome, to sunny rooms in 
the Via Felice. Here Mrs. Browning's worst anticipations 
were realized ; for she had the news of her sister's death. 
She suffered dumbly ; but this new sorrow served to 
aggravate her own debility. Mrs. Cook left three little girls, 
younger than Penini ; and at thought of them Mrs. Brown- 
ing could only see his face through a mist of tears.^ In 
consequence of her trouble she led a very secluded life this 
winter, Browning shielding her from ordinary visitors. A 
few she saw. Sir John Bowring, for instance, an English 
liberal who was quite of her way of thinking about Italy, and 
Hans Andersen, no politician, but a king in his own sphere. 
The tale must be repeated of a children's party at the 
Palazzo Barberini, the Storys* home, where, after Andersen 
had read his Ugly Duckliiigy Browning followed with TJie 
Pied Piper ; at the close of which reading Story, playing 
on his flute, which passed for bagpipes, headed a march of 
the delighted children.^ Hans Andersen's simplicity and 

' Mrs. David Ogilvy's Memoir, previously quoted. 
- W. IV. Story, Hi supra, vol. i. p. 286. 



MRS. BROWNING'S LAST DAYS 221 

earnestness won Mrs. Browning ; and he is the subject of 
Tlie North and the So?ith, the last poem she ever wrote. 

Browning had done hardly any writing since the previous 
winter ; and as in Paris he took to drawing for a change, so 
now he found a new and engrossing pursuit. He had made 
some study of anatomy ; and now, in Story's studio, he 
tried his hand at modelling in clay. He took great delight 
in this occupation, employing as it did both mind and body, 
and would work at it six hours a day. He copied such 
masterpieces as the Young Augustus and the Psyche, and 
the more he tired himself the better he was pleased. 
" Nothing," he assured his wife, " ever made him so happy 
before ! " A characteristic utterance ; for when one outlet 
for his energy failed him, he must find another, or be 
miserable. He does not seem to have been more than 
usually apprehensive about Mrs. Browning's health. The 
triumphant success of Garibaldi's enterprise, which gave 
Sicily and Naples to the Italian crown, cheered her spirits, 
and consequently raised her husband's hopes. Already 
they began to discuss summer plans and journeys, and to 
canvass the suitability of Fontainebleau as a place where they 
might join forces with Arabel Barrett and Browning's father 
and sister. But a few days before their return to Florence — 
their last return — Mrs. Browning had a short but alarming 
attack of illness. Browning had to fetch a doctor in the 
night, who stayed with them till morning. " It really 
seemed," he wrote to Story, " as if she would be strangled on 
the spot, and that for six hours together." ^ This frightened 
him, and he insisted on the idea of a journey to France being 
abandoned. It was enough, for the present, to get safely 
home to Casa Guidi. 

Another cause of depression followed. Of all the great 
Italians who had laboured for their country at this epoch, 
Cavour appeared to Mrs. Browning to be the greatest. Only 
fifty years of age, he had done the work and the thinking of 
several men ; and at the moment when he saw the achieve- 
ment of those great results which without his courage and 
sagacity could hardly have been effected, his health collapsed, 
and he died after a week's illness. " If tears or blood could 
' W. JV. Story, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 57. 



222 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

have saved him to us," Mrs. Browning wrote, " he should 
have had mine." In truth, the life which she would cheerfully 
have given was nearing its close. Cavour died on 6 June. 
Her own last illness, or, to speak more exactly, its last 
stage, began on the 23rd. She was not considered to be in 
danger until the third or fourth night. Even then she 
rallied, left her bed for the sofa in the salon, and read the 
AthcncBum and the Nazionc. On the 28th she did not leave 
her room, but received a visit from Miss Blagden in the 
afternoon, and heard with pleasure of the new premier's 
intention to walk in Cavour's footsteps. Her friend left her 
without apprehension. She bade her son good-night, telling 
him she was much better. She had herself no presentiment 
and little pain ; only her sleep was broken and troubled. 
At four o'clock she awoke, and assured her husband that she 
felt stronger. With no idea, it seems, that she was about to 
leave him, she gave expression to her love for him in the 
tenderest words. Supported in his arms, she became drowsy. 
Her head fell forward. He thought that she had fainted ; 
but it was the end. 



CHAPTER XIII 
SORROW AND ACHIEVEMENT 

Sorrow and resolution — Browning's farewell to Italy — His house in 
Warwick Crescent — His occupations — Neighbourhood of Arabel Barrett 
— His seclusion — His gradual return to social activities — First mention 
of "the Roman Murder Story"— Its protracted incubation— How the 
subject came to him — Mr, Cartwright's testimony — Potnpilia — Mrs. 
Browning's prose writings — Proposals to write her Life — Her Letters to 
R. H. Home — Summers at Sainte-Marie, near Pornic— Browning's house 
there — Dramatis Fcrsomc — Browning at Oxford — He makes acquaint- 
ance with Jowett — Death of his father— His sister makes her home with 
him — Death of Arabel Barrett — Summer sojourns at Croisic — The Ring 
and the Book published — Unstinted praise — Travels in Scotland — At St. 
Aubin with Milsand — Hervd Riel—Balanstion's Adventure— lis popu- 
larity — Prince Hohenstiel-ScMuangau — The reviewers mystified. 

THAT robust optimism which characterized Browning's 
attitude towards life, as it does his writings, had 
caused him throughout to take a sanguine view of 
his wife's physical powers ; the shock which their failure 
caused him was consequently overwhelming. Only when 
she was gone did he realize the truth. " Looking back at 
these past years," he said to the Storys, who on receipt of 
the news hastened from Leghorn to Florence, " I see that we 
have been all the time walking over a torrent on a straw." 
His grief was lasting and profound, but there was no rebellion 
in it. He could express his thankfulness that she passed 
almost painlessly, and without consciousness of separation ; 
that her last words and looks were full of happiness. Our 
sorrow for the dead must be in proportion to the love we 
bear them ; something, therefore, of the depth of his may be 
imagined. But what requires to be emphasized is, that even 
when his bereavement was new, his intensely virile tempera- 
ment made despair impossible. He had at once determined 



224 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

as he told Story, to begin life afresh ; " to break up every- 
thing, go to England and live and work and write." Brave 
and admirable words, expressive of a purpose which ulti- 
mately triumphed ; yet, because he was human, there came a 
moment when it seemed as if he had over-estimated his own 
endurance. That was when the time came for him to leave 
Florence. " The staying at Casa Guidi was not the worst of 
it," he wrote to Story subsequently. " I kept in my place 
there like a worm-eaten piece of old furniture, looking solid 
enough ; but when I was moved I began to go to pieces." 
The crisis passed, however, and his native vigour won the 
day.^ 

Moreover, his wife had bequeathed to him a sacred trust, 
though with no word spoken, the care of their child ; whose 
up-bringing now became his chief personal preoccupation.^ 
In the hour of sorrow Miss Blagden showed herself a mother 
to Penini ; when Mrs. Browning had been laid to rest in 
Florence she looked after him until his father's preparations 
for departure were completed ; and when on the first of 
August they bade farewell to the city of so many happy 
memories, which Browning was never again to behold, she 
accompanied them to Paris. There they parted, but met 
later on in England. Browning found Paris unbearable ; but 
when with his father, sister, and son he reached St. Enogat, 
near Dinard, he could breathe and live. The solitude of sea, 
shore and open country was medicine to his spirit. Now, we 
may suppose, was conceived that liking for the coasts of 
France which in future summers brought him back to them 
again and again. Yet in some moods he longed for action as 
an antidote to sorrowful thoughts. Even before August was 
out he felt, he wrote to Story, " impatient at doing nothing." 
Still, he remained ; and knew, in spite of his impatience, 

' See W. IF, Story, ut supra, vol. ii. pp. 66 and 97. A letter from Story to 
Norton contains a very full account of Mrs. Browning's last illness and death. 
Other sources of information are Browning's own letters to Leighton and Miss 
Haworth, given in full by Mrs. Orr, and Kate Field's article in the Atlantic 
Monthly for September, 1861. 

- Jowett, writing to a friend in 1865, shortly after making Browning's 
acquaintance, says: "Of personal objects he seems to have none except the 
education of his son, in which I hope in some degree to help him." Life and 
Letters of Benjamin Jowett, yol. i. p. 401. 



BEREAVED 225 

that to remain was salutary. " I am getting * mended up ' 
here," he writes in the same letter, " and shall no doubt last 
my proper time, for all the past." As to the future, his eyes 
were turned towards London, partly for his boy's education, 
partly that he might be near his wife's surviving sister, 
Arabel Barrett, who was established in a house in Delamere 
Terrace. 

Father and son set out for London in October. A 
contretemps about the boy's pony delayed their start. Mis- 
informed as to the proper train for its transport, Browning 
demanded its conveyance by the express. " No Briton's to 
be baulked," as he says half-seriously, half in irony. His 
dogged persistence, maintained through a two hours' con- 
troversy, wore down the polite resistance of the officials, and 
he carried his point. The incident is characteristic. Though 
he had lived abroad so much, though he was sometimes 
taken for an American, he was, as he himself put it, effectually 
rooted in his own garden. Another little episode of the 
journey shows that while he could assert his rights in his 
usual sturdy manner, he was still very vulnerable on the 
point of feeling. At Amiens he caught sight of Tennyson, 
who was travelling homewards with his wife and children. 
Browning pointed out the poet to his son ; but remembering 
a similar encounter, in earlier and happier days, he pulled his 
hat over his brows and so escaped notice. Recognition, just 
then, was more than he could have borne.^ 

He had put aside as intolerable the idea of housekeeping, 
and came to his first London anchorage in Chichester Road, 
off VVestbourne Terrace. Miss Blagden had a lodging close 
at hand. Here he remained for some months. A tutor was 
engaged for Pen, who was to go to the University in due 
course, but not by the way of a Public School. Browning 
was also occupied in preparing for the press his wife's Last 
Poems, together with her Translations, the " advertisement " 
to which is dated London, February, 1862. Dedicated to 
".grateful Florence," the little book was published in March ; 
with what respective degrees of pride and pain to himself it 
would require a measure of his own analytical subtlety to 
determine. He also acted as Story's literary representative 

' W. W. Story, ut supra, vol. ii. p. ICX3. 
Q 



226 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

in England, finding hospitality in the columns of the Daily 
Neivs for a series of three letters in which the sculptor put 
forth the claims of the North to English sympathy, the 
American Civil War being in progress, and attending to 
matters concerned with the production of his Roba di Roma, 
a kind of Roman sketchbook. Thus his life did not lack 
occupations ; but it was, he told his friend, as grey as the 
winter sky of London.^ Often, it is evident, he was, in 
thought, back again in Florence ; or longing for the smell 
of the wet clay in Story's studio, where the singing of the 
birds came through the open door. 

It must have been some relief, at any rate, when he 
exchanged the discomforts of life in lodgings for a more 
settled abode. When he first took No. 19, Warwick Crescent, 
which was to be his home for twenty-five years, he took it 
as di pied-d-terre, with no intention of a long sojourn. But he 
got used to it, found it convenient, and so remained. It had 
the attraction of being close to Miss Barrett's house, Warwick 
Crescent being practically a continuation of Delamere Terrace. 
The place, too, has a certain charm of its own, an element of 
the unusual denied to most localities in London. The houses 
face a balustrade and trees, with the Grand Junction Canal 
beyond them, which at this point widens to the dimensions 
of a minute lake, with a tree-clad islet in its midst. West- 
ward the neighbourhood is decidedly squalid ; but in the 
sixties, when Pen Browning used to row along the canal as 
far as Kensal Green, there were, beyond Delamere Terrace, 
no houses on its banks. Just beyond No. 19, a bridge spans 
the canal, to which, as Browning used to tell the story, Byron 
once dragged a reluctant John Murray, to show him the spot 
where a publisher had drowned himself! 

It was Browning's habit to call upon his sister-in-law every 
afternoon ; and with her he attended Bedford Chapel during 
the incumbency of the Revd. Thomas Jones, a gifted 
Welshman. On several occasions he conversed with him 
in the vestry after service, and once received a visit from him 
at his house. He wrote, in 1884, a preface to a posthumous 
volume of Jones' sermons, Tlie Divine Order, in which he 
pays a Iribute to his " liberal humanity " and his eloquence. 

' W. IV. Story, ut supra, vol. ii. p. III. 




'-■-•, i-j 



"THE ROMAN MURDER STORY" 227 

" It was a fancy of mine," he wrote, " that, in certain respects 
and under certain moods, a younger Carlyle might, sharing 
the same convictions, have spoken so, even looked so." 

For some time after his return to England, he shrank 
from society, seeing hardly any old friends even, except the 
Procters. Early in January he was twice at D. G. Rossetti's 
studio, who considered himself highly favoured, since the 
poet had " hardly seen any one as yet since his bereave- 
ment '* ; and a little later he made acquaintance with Millais. 
His reason assured him that seclusion availed him nothing ; 
that the long solitary evenings, after Pen had gone to bed, 
tended to morbid introspection. The Storys urged him not 
to shut himself up ; and as early as March, 1862, he is found 
acting on their advice, though at first with painful effort. 
Indeed, a year was to pass before he finally resolved that no 
suitable invitation which came to him should go unaccepted.^ 
After this he moved freely in general society, and was a 
frequenter of the studios and concert rooms ; of the theatres, 
too, when anything of serious interest was on hand.^ 

His first spring in England brought him an offer of the 
editorship of the Cornhill Magazine, from which Thackeray 
had retired ; but the offer, after some consideration, was 
declined. For a summer holiday he took his boy to Cambo, 
a village in the Basque country, where Pen found some French 
playfellows, and to Biarritz. For his part he made a careful 
study of Euripides, which was destined to bear fruit later ; and 
meditated " the Roman murder story," of which the first men- 
tion now appears in a letter to Miss Blagden. " The whole 
of it is pretty well in my head," he tells her.^ 

On the principle that " in small proportions we just beauties 
see," it is open to any reader of Browning to prefer this, 
that, or the other of his shorter poems to The Ring and the 
Book ; yet that this " Roman murder story " is the greatest 

' See Mr. Edmund Gosse's article in the Supplement to the Dictionary of 
National Biography. 

- An early fruit of his intercourse with the art world is found in the lines Deaf 
and Dumb, written in 1862 for a group of statuary by Woolner, but not published 
until 1868. 

* Mrs. Orr's Life, p. 260. It may have been Mrs. Browning's fondness for 
Euripides which impelled him to make a thorough examination of this dramatist's 
work. To Swinburne, curiously enough, Euripides was anathema. 



228 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

achievement of his art it would be difficult to deny. To one 
who desired to become acquainted with his poetry and asked 
what he should read first, he made answer, " The Ring and the 
Book, of course." It is therefore of interest to remark how 
protracted was the period of incubation of this masterpiece. 
It was a burning noontide of June, i860, when, as he crossed 
the Square of San Lorenzo in Florence, Browning picked 
up the "square old yellow book," from amid a heap of 
" odds and ends of ravage " offered for sale, 

" Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just ; " 

it was the winter of 1868 when the first instalment of The 
Ring and the Book appeared. For eight years, then, this 
true tale of wrong and pity was, though with varying degrees 
of engrossment, the companion of his inner life. That such 
long and close companionship is the necessary basis or only 
begetter of a great poem it would be futile to affirm ; but it is 
certain that Browning never wrote better or with more point 
and vigour than in this case, and never after longer or pro- 
founder meditation. To the fact that he brooded over his 
theme so long and so deeply, that he read the documents at 
his disposal eight times, that by continual association with his 
characters he became almost, as it were, identified with each 
one of them in turn, the finished work owes that certainty of 
touch and that air of utter completeness which have never 
been disputed. Here are no ragged edges, no makeshift 
reasonings, no tentative portrayals. The poet has entire 
mastery over his materials, and he knows it ; he moves 
amid them with ease, with power, and with triumph. 

He has told us, in his own inimitable fashion, how, as 
he walked homewards that day in Florence, he was wholly 
absorbed in his prize ; how he read on 

" from written title-page 
To written index, on, through street and street, 
At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge ; " 

until by the time he reached the doorway of Casa Guidi he 
had acquainted himself with the whole story of the trial and 
execution of Guido Franceschini for the murder of his wife ; 
how that same night he stepped out on to the balcony, and 
looking over the roof of the Church of San Felice, lit up for 




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GENESIS OF "THE RING AND THE BOOK" 229 

festival, saw in imagination through the blackness all the 
scenes where the grim tragedy was played out — Arezzo, 
where Pompilia was at once wife and prisoner, the wayside 
inn at Castelnuovo, still unchanged to-day, where the furious 
husband came up with the fugitives at dawn, and Rome, 
where he glutted his revenge and paid the penalty. It 
all acted itself over again before him, as he stood there, 
breathing 

" The beauty and the fearfulness of night." 

Such were the experiences and impressions of "that memor- 
able day ; " and, he being the poet that he was, there can be 
little doubt that on the vision there followed a desire to 
embody it in verse. But the next day, or the day after, or 
many days after — it is impossible to be precise — there came 
reaction, and he put away any such design. It is certain that 
he offered the story to one of his friends in Rome that winter. 
Miss Ogle, as subject for a novel ; equally certain that he 
seriously suggested to another friend, Mr. W. C. Cartwright, 
that he should write an account of it. He went so far as to 
say that he would give him the book. Mr. Cartwright is 
under the impression, though unable positively to affirm, that 
he had it not then with him, but had left it in Florence. If 
that be so. Browning's statement that he took the book with 
him to Rome in order to institute inquiries upon the matter 
must be regarded as a poetic figment. In any case it is 
fortunate that neither of his friends accepted his proposal. 
As time went on, the " murder story " captivated his imagina- 
tion more and more, and his heart as well. The figure of 
Pompilia, so infinitely pathetic, so intensely spiritual, un- 
questionably owes something to his own dearest memories 
and his own bereavement. When Nathaniel Hawthorne 
visited the Brownings in 1858 he described Mrs. Browning 
as "a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all;" as elfin, 
rather than earthly ; yet " sweetly disposed towards the 
human race, though only remotely akin to it." ^ Many years 
afterwards Browning characterized this description to Domett 
as very good and correct. Pompilia, it is true, was " tall " ; 

' Italian N'oUbooks, pp. 11-13. There is more true insight in this picture of 
the Browning household than in any other. 



230 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

yet she has much of that almost unearthly grace and gracious- 
ness which Hawthorne saw in Mrs. Browning. Well, there- 
fore, might it seem matter of " predestination " that Browning, 
and no other, should relate her story. 

Upon that story's actual composition he spent four years : 
so at any rate his own words, in the last section of the poem, 
lead us to suppose ; when, handling once more the old 
vellum-covered quarto, he exclaims — 

" How will it be, my four years' intimate, 
When thou and I part company anon ? " 

Mr. Cartwright, who spent a night or two at Warwick 
Crescent, about 1864 or '5, remembers that Browning then 
told him that he was engaged upon a poem based on the 
Franceschini affair, as to which, he added, he had procured 
further information : this would be that contained in a reprint 
of a contemporary manuscript pamphlet, sent him by a 
friend, containing an account of the murder and of Guido's 
trial and execution. The contents of the " square old yellow 
book," now in the library of Balliol College, have been 
described by the poet himself. Three-fifths of it are print, 
the remainder manuscript. The larger part consists of an 
account of the trial, with its pleadings and counter-pleadings ; 
with which have been bound up, probably by their recipient, 
three manuscript letters announcing and describing the 
execution of the murderer to Cencini, a friend of his house, 
and the printed " instrument of the Definitive Sentence," by 
which the innocence of Guido's victim was affirmed. 

" The Book ! I turn its medicinable leaves 
In London now till, as in Florence erst, 
A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb, 
And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair. 
Letting me have my will again with these." 

Thus does the poet vouchsafe us a momentary glimpse of 
the joy of his creative hours. The Book was " pure, crude 
fact" with which he had to fuse his own "live soul." His 
own fancy was the alloy ; and not until fact and fancy were 
commingled could he hope to hammer out a perfect Ring. 
And as an actual Book, so an actual Ring played its part in 
his inspiration ; he had in mind a simple and modern 




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MINOR ACTIVITIES 231 

Castellani ring, which his wife had worn, and which he wore 
later fastened to his watch-chain, with the letters A E I upon 
its flattened upper surface.^ 

But in this year, 1862, the "Roman murder story" was 
to remain untreated some time longer ; " smithcraft," as he 
termed it, could not yet begin. He was at present occupied 
in preparing a new three-volume edition of his works — the 
third — inclusive of all his published poems except Pauline. 
Some slight modifications were introduced in Paracelsus, and 
in Sordeilo various rhymes were changed and some new hues 
incorporated. He had also determined to reprint Mrs. 
Browning's early contributions to the Athenceuin, which ap- 
peared, as did his own new edition, early in 1863, under the 
title of The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets. 
His own volumes were dedicated to Forster, who about this 
time was making, with Procter's collaboration, a book of 
Selections from those poems of which he had been, in their 
author's own words, "the promptest and staunchest helper 
from their first publication."^ The design, as a preface 
explains, 

" originated with two friends, who, from the first appearance of 
Paracelsus, have regarded its writer as among the few great poets 
of the century ; who have seen this opinion, since, gain ground with 
the best readers and critics ; and who believe that such a selection 
as the present may go far to render it universal." 

The book may be regarded as stronger and more repre- 
sentative than its successors in this kind, since it contains 
not only lyrics and romances, but also extracts from all 
the longer poems {Pauli?ie again excepted), and from all the 
dramas save only A Soul's Tragedy. This tribute from the 
friends who had believed in him from the first must have 
been a source of true pleasure to the poet ; and indeed he 
needed solace just now, being pestered by various persons 
desirous of printing certain letters of his wife, which were not 
in his keeping, and of writing her biography. All such 
proposals put him in a frenzy of indignation and pain ; he 

' Communicated by Mr. R. Barrett Browning. Mr. W. C. Cartwright is the 
authority for the incidents with which his name is connected, lie was on intimate 
terms with the poet ; used, in Rome, to be constantly in his company, 

* From the dedication to Forster. 



232 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

met them with a point-blank refusal, and was prepared, in the 
case of letters, to take legal action. Nor is this attitude 
surprising, when it is remembered what positive agony was 
caused to his wife by any written, still more by any printed, 
reference to her personal sorrows. He somewhat modified it 
later on, when in 1877 he sanctioned the publication of her 
correspondence with R. H. Home ; because, as he informed 
a correspondent, this " was literary only, between persons 
who had never seen each other, and before I could pretend to 
any sort of guardianship."* He agreed to the printing of 
these letters, as he told Domett, without asking to see them ; 
because he knew that there would not be contained in them 
any narrow opinions or ill-natured criticisms of any one which 
it might be objectionable to publish. Further, he recognized, 
many years later, the propriety of an account of his wife being 
inserted in the Dictionary of National Biography, and con- 
sented to verify the dates in the manuscript of his friend Lady 
Ritchie, to whom the task was entrusted. But beyond this 
he would not go. When Domett remarked that it was a pity 
her Life could not be written, " No," he said, " it could not, 
or should not, be done." It was attempted, however ; and 
when preparing a complete edition of her writings in 1887 
he took occasion to point out certain errors of fact which had 
found their way into a biography, in the production of which 
he had declined to bear a part. 

But to pass to his own fresh compositions ; when, in 
accordance with what now became his customary practice, he 
sought in the summer of 1863 for rest and seclusion in a 
remote village, some of the poems which were to form his 
next volume must have been already in existence, and others 
in the making. One, May a?id Death, had already appeared in 
the Keepsake for 1857. Certainly two of them, James Lee 
(later called James Lee's Wife) and Go/d Hair are intimately 
and respectively connected with Sainte Marie, the tiny hamlet 
of Breton fisherfolk which was his retreat during this and the 
two following summers, and with Pornic, the little neigh- 
bouring seaport, in those days not the full-fledged watering- 
place it has since become. At Sainte Marie Browning 
occupied the mayor's house, " large enough, clean and bare," 

' Wise, ut supra. Second Series, vol. i. p. 74. 



"DRAMATIS PERSONS" 233 

he tells Miss Blagden. It is a solid and severe structure, 
built of greyish rough-cast, with shutters of the same colour 
and slated roof, an unpretentious door, and two red-brick 
chimneys, which only by their colour can be said to vary the 
general monotony of effect. Hard by is an old church, with 
a neglected, since ruined, Norman porch ; and the winds 
sweep mournfully through the wild grasses which cover the 
adjacent graves. Truly, the spot was one to inspire such 
sorrowful reflections as might people the lonely hours of 
James Lee's Wife. The fig-tree, the writhen vines, the fields, 
the sun-dried turf, the beach and the wide expanse of sea 
which she beheld from the "doorway," made up the view 
from Browning's windows. Something of its undertone of 
melancholy may have harmonized, we may suppose, with his 
then prevailing mood. But the note of wide spaces of sea, 
sky and land is not one of unrestricted sadness. If the wind 
was mournful, the sea was soft, and rich with promises of 
healing ; and there was the 

" good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth," 

with its message of hope and better cheer. The poet " rather 
liked it all." He could work undisturbed, and keep early 
hours, read a little with his son, and have his father with him.^ 

Gold Hair is a true story, and may be read in M, Carou's 
Histoire de Pornic. Browning has not diverged in any par- 
ticular from the details there recorded. The discovery of the 
gold was made in 1782. " Pleasant little Pornic church," 
dedicated to St. Gilles, was pulled down during his third visit 
to Sainte Marie, to give place to a new one ; an unnecessary 
piece of vandalism which he regretted keenly. It was at the 
annual fair of St Gilles that he saw the handsome gipsy- 
woman who suggested his Fifine. 

James Lee and Gold Hair hold the first and second place 
in Dramatis Personce, his next volume. Published in 1864, it 
has been well described as a continuation of Men and Women. 
Yet certain differences are to be noted. On the one hand, the 
seamy side of life is more often in evidence, as in The Worst 
of it, Dis aliter visum, Too Late, Confessions, and several more. 

' His father was certainly with him once at Sainte Marie, probably oftcncr, 
Li Poite Brnvniftsct Ste. Mane de Pontic : par I'Abbe J. Dominique. 



234 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

On the other hand, in some of the poems, notably in Abt 
Vogler, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Prospice, and the Epilogue, the poet's 
spiritual fervour touches its high-water mark. It is as 
though, possessed with a deepened sense of the tragedy of 
human things, and less alive, for the time being, to their joy, 
he turned for relief to other planes of existence ; upon which 
he fixes a gaze direct, confident and fearless. Vestiges of his 
own sorrow, and of his conflict with it, are certainly to be 
discerned in D7'amatis PersoncB\ hardly, indeed, could it be 
otherwise. In Prospice, one of his rare autobiographical 
utterances, they are plain for all to see. To this year also 
belong the lines on Frederick Leighton's OrpJieus and 
Eiirydice, the expression of a wife's intense devotion ; which, 
with sublime ineptitude, those responsible for the Royal 
Academy Catalogue printed as prose. 

The tendency to find a starting-point in actual personages 
whether belonging to previous ages or his own, is a strongly- 
marked feature in Dramatis Personce. 

May and Death, as we have seen, commemorates his 
cousin, James Silverthorne ; A Face is that of the first Mrs. 
Coventry Patmore, " the Angel in the House " ; and the 
features of Home lurk behind the mask of Mr. Sludge, the 
*^ Mediutn.'' Widely read in Rabbinical lore. Browning knew 
that Ben Ezra was an appropriate mouthpiece for the 
sublimest spiritual musings. This learned Hebrew, who 
flourished in the twelfth century of our era, was one of the 
four great lights of the Jews in the middle ages. He 
travelled widely, was the author of many scientific and 
biblical treatises, and was a strong upholder of the doctrine 
of the immortality of the soul. Question has been raised 
why Browning did not choose a greater composer than the 
Abbe Vogler, whose name is less familiar than those of 
several of his pupils, Weber and Meyerbeer for instance, to 
express his feelings as to those lofty ideas which music is 
capable of inspiring. But he needed, in order to illustrate 
his parable, not music that has survived, but that of an 
extemporizer, the persistence of whose chords has to be taken 
on trust ; and so the Bavarian Abbe serves his turn quite as 
well as a greater master. Besides, account must be taken of 
his liking for out-of-the-way characters and careers. The 



A MESSAGE FROM AMERICA 235 

Abbd Vogler's life was full of vicissitudes and much-travelled ; 
his " orchestrion," defamed in Amsterdam, was a success in 
London ; and of those who knew him, some held him to be 
a genius, others (wrongly, be it said) a charlatan. These facts 
were eminently calculated to awaken Browning's interest. 
Vogler's countenance, if Zeller's portrait at Darmstadt does 
it justice, is expressive of shrewdness and good-humour 
rather than of any marked spirituality. 

About one poem in this volume he received through 
Mr. Edmund Gosse a message from Dr. H. H. Furness, of 
Philadelphia, eminent as a Shakespearian scholar, which 
highly gratified him. " Tell him," it ran, " how deeply, how 
fervently I bless him for writing Prospice." ^ 

When the second sojourn at Sainte Marie ended, he had 
a fancy to see what Arcachon was like. Finding it noisy 
and modern, he and his party pushed on to St. Jean-de-Luz, 
and thence, there being no accommodation, to Cambo once 
more. From this village he visited \.h.Qpas de Roland, which, 
as letters to Story and to Tennyson testify, impressed him 
greatly. On his return to London in October he received 
from the latter a present of his newly published Enoch Arden 
volume. Tlie Northern Farmer^ shrewdly analytic, after the 
fashion of many of his own character-studies, took him by 
storm ; and he terms the metre of Boadicea " a paladin's 
achievement." " I am thinking," he writes, " of Roland's 
Pass in the Pyrenees, where he hollowed a rock that had 
hitherto blocked the road by one kick of his boot." ^ 

He was now free to devote himself to "the Roman 
murder story," which under his shaping hands was to become 
the greatest of his poetical achievements. During the four 
years which he gave to it his creative powers were certainly 
at their highest. A shrewd observer's description of what 
he was at this period is consequently of especial interest. In 
1865, with a view to entering his son's name at Balliol, he 



* Wise, ut supra, Second Series, vol. ii. p. 21. 

^ Tcnnyso7i, a Memoir, vol. ii. p. l6. It is not without interest to note a 
parallelism of dates in the production of some of the greatest works of the two 
poets. In Memoriain and Christmas Eve and Easter Day both appeared in 1850, 
Maud and Men and Women in 1855, Enoch Arden and Dramatis Persons in 
1864, The Holy Grail and the last parts of The Ring and the Book in 1 869. 



236 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

made the acquaintance of Benjamin Jowett, then senior tutor 
at that college. 

" It is impossible," writes Jowett, *' to speak without enthusiasm 
of his open, generous nature and his great ability and knowledge. 
I had no idea that there was a perfectly sensible poet in the world, 
entirely free from enmity, jealousy, or any other littleness, and 
thinking no more of himself than if he were an ordinary man. His 
great energy is very remarkable, and his determination to make the 
most of the remainder of his life." ' 

It is noteworthy that about this time Browning expressed 
precisely the same resolve to Miss Blagden : " I certainly 
will do my utmost to make the most of my poor self before 
I die."'-* Truly, any reader of The Ring mid the Book who 
knew nothing of its author might well picture him as gifted 
with those very qualities and powers which Jowett enumerates. 

It gratified Browning, on his visit to Oxford, to find 
among the undergraduates a growing interest in his work. 
He knew that he was gaining ground, for Dramatis Personcs 
had reached a second edition, and, as his publishers told him, 
most of the new orders came from Oxford and Cambridge. 
But the process was slow ; and the impression which long 
neglect had made upon his mind could not readily be 
obliterated. Writing to Mrs. Millais as late as January, 1867, 
he speaks of himself as " the most unpopular poet that ever 
was.""* But the welcome given in this same year to a 
volume of essays on his poetry by J. T. Nettleship was an 
agreeable assurance that, if the circle whom he addressed 
was comparatively small, it did not lack appreciation. 

Meanwhile, work upon the great poem went on steadily, 
whether he was at home or abroad. It occupied the lion's 
share of the time he devoted to composition, which meant 
some three hours in the earlier part of each day. Certain 
minor tasks, however, were fulfilled. In 1865 he prepared a 
selection from his wife's poems, and another nosegay from 
his own for Moxon's "Miniature Poets." In this series 
Tennyson had led the way. No verses chosen for the earlier 

' Life and Letters of Betijamin Joxoett^ by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, 
vol. i. pp. 400-1. 

- Mrs. Orr's Life, p. 270. 

* Life and Letters of Sir John E. Milluisy by J. C. Millais, vol. i. p. 440. 




ROBKRT UROWMXG, 1865 

FROM Tiin: i'Ai\'ri\(; r.v i;. i". watts, r.a. 



MISS SARIANNA BROWNING 237 

selection were included, nor any but the lightest of his 
pieces. He also attended to the revision of his works for the 
fourth, or third collected, edition, that of 1868^ ; and Hervi 
Riely which remained unpublished until 1871, is dated 
" Croisic, September 30, 1867." It is arguable, also, that the 
descriptions of locality in The Two Poets of Croisic (1878) 
are too graphic to be reminiscent. But with these excep- 
tions The Ring and the Book engrossed him wholly. As he 
wrote to a correspondent, "the business of getting done 
with some twenty thousand lines [in fact, over twenty-one 
thousand] very effectually suppressed any impulse to whistle 
between-whiles." ^ 

Before its completion he was to lose two persons very 
dear to him, his father and his sister-in-law. His father had 
almost completed his eighty-fifth year when he died in Paris 
after a short illness, retaining to the end all the clearness of 
his brain and all the unselfishness of his disposition, begging 
his son and daughter not to grieve for him, since he was 
entirely happy. When all was over, Browning took his sister 
back with him to London, and from this date (14 June, 1866) 
she shared his home and was his constant and congenial 
comrade. There was in Miss Sarianna Browning much of 
her brother. She was a woman of excellent understanding, 
good sense and good temper, and she devoted herself to her 
brother as she had previously devoted herself to her parents. 
The comparatively early death of Arabel Barrett, which took 
place just two years later, was in a sense a sharper grief, 
since it re-opened an old wound. There was much in her 
nature that resembled that of her sister Elizabeth. Browning 
felt her death keenly ; it was long before he could bring him- 
self so much as to pass the house where she had lived. 

Sainte Marie had served its turn for three years ; but the 
neighbourhood still charmed the Brownings, and Croisic was 
chosen as their summer retreat in 1866 and '7. Croisic, 
northward of the mouth of the Loire, was another Pornic, 
only rather wilder ; it lies on a small bay near the extremity 

' In this edition Pauline was acknowledged and included. 

- Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 24. The letter was written, about a month before 
the first volume of The Rmg and the Book was published, to Mr. E. S. Dallas, 
author of The Gay Science, who had invited him to contribute something to 
the Mirror y a short-lived weekly journal. 



238 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

of a sandy peninsula, whose shores are swept and often 
drenched by great rushing waves. A few miles inland is the 
ancient walled town of Guerande, and "wild Batz," whose 
inhabitants, supposed of Saxon race, and getting a hard 
livelihood out of the salt-marshes, attracted the poet's notice 
by their quaint attire, shirts and baggy breeches of white and 
large black flapping hats. Vestiges of druidical worship are 
in sight ; and the survival of pagan rites, which Catholic 
remonstrance could not wholly kill, interested him not a 
little. He was lodged handsomely, too ; he had never 
occupied a more delightfully quaint old house, and seldom 
a more roomy one. For these amenities he made repay- 
ment, as his manner was, in verse. Croisic's forgotten 
worthy, Herve Riel, lives again in the stirring lines which go 
by his name. Croisic's Two Poets are resuscitated ; Rene 
Gentilhomme, whose courtly sonneteering was all burnt up 
by the sudden lightning flash of, so he believed, a message 
from God ; and Paul Desforges-Maillard, whose 

" story furnished forth that famous play 
Of Piron's ' Metromanie,' " — 

a very diverting story it is — and may consequently be read in 
French or in English, according to the reader's predilection.^ 
In 1867 the University of Oxford honoured Browning 
and itself by conferring on him by diploma the degree of 
M.A., a distinction only awarded for eminence in the field of 
learning. He must have recalled with pleasure that Dr. 
Johnson's merit had been similarly recognized. A little 
later he became, chiefly through Jowett's instrumentality, 
honorary fellow of Balliol, where in after years he was 
repeatedly his guest. Next year he might have been Lord 
Rector of St. Andrews ; but this, and all similar positions, he 
declined, shrinking, Mr, Gosse has recorded, from the " vague 
but considerable extra expense " which they would have 
entailed.^ About the same period he changed his publishers ; 
Messrs. Smith and Elder from this time produced his works. 

* Browning had probably read the story of Herve Riel in Caillo's Notes sur le 
Croisic. 

- He refused in 1875, and again in 1S84, the offer of the Lord Rectorship of 
Glasgow University. 



"THE RING AND THE BOOK" PUBLISHED 239 

The reason was that Browning formed a personal friendship 
with Mr. George Murray Smith, who practically was the 
firm, and this put business dealings on a pleasant footing. 
An example of Mr. Smith's sagacity was quickly furnished. 
On reading the manuscript of The Ring and tlie Book, he 
took so favourable a view of it that he believed it would 
bear printing in four monthly volumes, instead of two, as the 
author had proposed ; and this, accordingly, was done.^ 

With the end of his great undertaking in sight, Browning 
must have fully appreciated this year's summer holiday. 
Again Brittany was the choice. In company with his son 
and sister he visited a district rich in prehistoric monuments 
and full of memories of Balzac's Chouans — Rennes, Carnac, 
Locmariaquer, Ste. Anne d' Auray, where Breton pilgrims most 
do congregate, the quaint old-world Morlaix, St. Pol de 
Leon with its tapering spire, and Roscoff with its wide, rock- 
strewn sands. Thence, by way of Quimper, to the little 
fishing-town of Audierne, on the westernmost point of France, 
where they found rest for their feet and took their ease, this 
time, at an inn. Perfect weather, bathing, and interesting 
walks predisposed them to contentment.^ 

The AtJien(Bum for 21 November, 1868, contained an 
announcement that the first volume of The Ring mid the 
Book was ready ; and the remaining three followed at regular 
intervals of one month, as arranged. On the 20th Browning 
had read the first part aloud at James Knowles's house 
at Clapham, where Tennyson was staying. It seemed to 

* Wise, ut supra. Second Series, vol. i. p. 27. Browning makes this state- 
ment in a letter to Messrs Fields, Osgood and Co., dated September 2, i868. 
In another letter (Second Series, vol, ii. p. 13) dated 17 February, 1884, he says 
that for fifty years he had stipulated that his publishers should never read a line of 
the work they were to publish until it was in corrected proof. He adds that 
Mr. Smith " cheerfully accepted this condition from the very first ; and on the 
very last of our transactions he good-naturedly remarked, ' Had you let me read 
Jocoseria I would have printed 500 additional copies at once.' " The discrepancy 
must be explained either by postulating a lapse of memory on Browning's part, or 
by supposing " manuscript " in the earlier letter to be a slip for " proofs." 

- Mrs. Orr {Life, p. 279) implies that the inn was not very comfortable. This 
may mean an absence of carpets and easy-chairs, which obtained at St. Pol-de- 
Leon's one hotel when the present writer visited it twenty years ago. The fare, 
however, was good and plentiful, and the same may have been the case at 
Audierne. 



240 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Tennyson ** full of strange vigour and remarkable in many 
ways," but he was " doubtful whether it can ever be popular." * 
Some later comments by individuals are of interest. Fitz- 
gerald could make nothing of the poem, but then he " never 
could read Browning." ^ Connop Thirlwall found it at once 
attractive and difficult, and deplored the undue and " Chinese- 
like " condensation of its style ; ^ Carlyle spoke of it with 
surface sarcasm. But these casual utterances are of small 
moment in comparison with the considered verdict of the 
weightier reviews. They were practically unanimous in their 
approval — Fortnightly, Quarterly, Edinburgh, London Quar- 
terly, Revue des Deux Mondes, A thencsum. Never before had 
the poet won such general and unstinted praise. Room 
must be found for two of the most striking commendations. 
Speaking of the Pope, Caponsacchi and Pompilia, the Edin- 
burgh Review said : " In English literature the creative 
faculty of the poet has not produced three characters more 
beautiful or better to contemplate than these three " ; and 
the AthencBJim, in summing up, remarked : "We must record 
at once our conviction, not merely that The Ring and the 
Book is beyond all parallel the supremest poetical achieve- 
ment of our time, but that it is the most precious and pro- 
found spiritual treasure that England has produced since the 
days of Shakespeare." 

Before we take our leave of this poem, an interesting dis- 
covery must be recorded. In January, 1900, thirty-one years 
after its publication, Signor Giorgi, librarian of the Royal 
Casanatense Library in Rome, unearthed a manuscript 
volume of old trials, wherein is bound up, along with the 
examination of Beatrice Cenci and the account of the recan- 
tation, in 1686, of Miguel de Molinos, whose followers are so 
often mentioned in The Ring and ilie Book, a narrative of the 
trial and death of Guido Franceschini. The manuscript has 
much in common with the information of the " square old 
yellow book," but supplements it in various ways, and is the 
fullest prose account of the whole case which is known to 
exist. Towards the end of it a reflection occurs which 

* Tennyson, a Memoir, vol. ii. p. 59- 

* Ibid. vol. ii. p. 69. 

' Letters to a Friend, vol. ii. p. 184. 




IHK .-^AN V I.KAIKNTE GATE, AREZZO 

liY THIS GATE— THE NORTH-WES'lERN GATE — CAPONSACCHI AND POMPILIA ESCAPED ON 
APRIL 30, 1697 



A REST FROM COMPOSITION 241 

curiously anticipates the three points of view adopted by 
Browning in Half Rome, The Other Half Rome, and Tertium 
Quid. " Some defended the Comparini, on the ground that 
they had received ill-usage ; others the Franceschini, on the 
point of honour ; but upon calm reflection both were adjudged 
equally guilty — except Pompilia " — it is permissible to linger 
for a moment on that fragrant name — " who, being totally 
ignorant of the truth, had committed no other fault than that 
of having consented to a marriage at the command of her 
mother without the knowledge of her father ; and who had 
fled from her husband's home under fear of death, with which 
she had been repeatedly and unjustly threatened." ^ 

After the appearance of his magmim opus Browning 
rested for a while from the labours of composition. It is 
natural to conceive of poets as brooding lovingly over their 
completed works ; but to attribute such an attitude to him 
would be to misunderstand his temperament and the deliberate 
principle on which he worked. He had a facility for forgetting 
his own things when once they were done. A finished poem 
was put away and behind him ; not, as he explained, because 
he undervalued it, but because he held it " good husbandry 
of energy in an artist to forget what is behind and press 
onward to what is before." The Ring and the Book was no 
exception. Writing twelve years after its publication, he 
says : " I have not looked at the poem since it appeared in 
print. At present I have the faintest memory concerning 
any particular part or passage in it." There is something 
almost forbidding in this neglect ; an unreasoning desire 
surges up to reproach the poet for slighting his own offspring ! 
Surprising as the attitude is, however, it has to be accepted ; ^ 
but not, indeed, wholly without deductions. He would read 
from his poems when requested : we find him reading aloud, 
this summer of 1869, parts of The Ring and the Book at 
Naworth. 

In any case, his leisure never took the form of inactivity. 

' A translation of this version of Pompilia's story, done by W. Hall Griffin, 
appeared in the Monthly Review, November, 1900, See Appendix B. 

"^ See Wise, ut supra, Second Series, pp. 13 and 14, a letter written to Professor 
Dowden about Sordello ; and another written to Lord Courtney of Penwith, 
published (in part) by him in the Times Literary Suppiement, 25 February, 1909. 
R 



242 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

If he did not at once begin to meditate a new poem, he did 
not fail in his allegiance to the sister arts of painting and 
music, whose kinship with poetry he expresses so finely in 
Balaitstion s Adventure, or neglect the claims of society. He 
made many new friends, but none who proved dearer than 
the old and tried ones. Constantly in the spring Milsand 
was his guest in London, and this summer saw a renewal of 
intercourse with the Storys. In July he was out of sorts. 
" I was unwell," he writes to Mrs. Frederick Lehmann, " having 
been so for some time — and feel the grasshopper a burden all 
day long in the house, from which I never stirred." In this 
mood northern latitudes attracted him. In company with 
the Storys and their daughter he set out for Scotland, staying 
first at a little inn on Loch Achnault, near Garve, where the 
old style of life was renewed — luncheon amid the heather, 
followed by chapters from Rob Roy — and afterwards at Loch 
Luichart Lodge, where Louisa, Lady Ashburton, a brilliant 
if somewhat overpowering personage, was their hostess. Lady 
Marian Alford, a friend in Roman days, was among those 
who listened to the readings from The Ring and the Book. 
For another friend. Lord Dufferin, who had built a tower at 
Clandeboye in honour of his mother's memory. Browning 
wrote a sonnet, as Tennyson a poem ; but did not include 
his Helenas Tower in any edition of his works.^ 

The following summer found him and his sister at St. 
Aubin, 

" Meek, hitherto un-Murrayed bathing-place, 
Best loved of sea-coast-nook-ful Normandy." 

The presence of Milsand was the attracting cause, the only 
drawback the war then raging between France and Germany. 
Browning would tramp along the beach, with Homer for 
companion, and he took his customary delight in sea-bathing ; 
but Milsand's society was the crown of the feast. He has 
sketched for us this reserved, sensitive, understanding man, 
a Protestant physician of souls, whose nature was in many 
ways the complement of his own. 

^ This northern travel is recorded in Mr. James's IV. W. Stor)', vol. ii. pp. 
197-8, and 200. For the poem see Appendix A. 



MILSAND'S PORTRAIT 243 

' There he stands, reads an English newspaper, 
Stock-still, and now, again upon the move. 
Paces the beach to taste the Spring. 

He knows more, and loves better, than the world 
That never heard his name, and never may. 
What hinders that my heart relieve itself, 
Milsand, who makest warm my wintry world, 
And wise my heaven, if there we consort too ? " * 

To this close friend, it is worth remembering, and to none 
other, Browning used to submit his manuscripts, for criticism 
of their matter and even of their punctuation. Other visits to 
St. Aubin were to follow ; but on this occasion the intercourse 
of the two men was cut short by the vexatious incident of the 
Englishman being taken for a German spy. Milsand therefore 
insisted on the necessity of immediate retreat. The usual 
passenger boats were no longer running, but he hurried his 
friends to Honfleur, where they secured their passage on a 
cattle-boat bound for Southampton. Browning did not 
approve of the French cause, but he sympathized with the 
sufferings of the distressed Parisians. One practical instance 
may be recorded. Averse, as a rule, from his poems 
appearing in the magazines, he offered the as yet unprinted 
Herve Riel to his publisher for insertion in the Cornhill ; 
and there, in the number for March, 1871, it found a 
place. The cheque for .^100 which he received from Mr. 
Smith in payment he at once forwarded to Paris ; an act, 
when the subject of the poem is considered, as graceful as it 
was generous. 

With the spring of this year his muse was again in flower 
Balaiistion' s Adventure, imposed on him as a task by Lady 
Cowper, and proving "the most delightful of May-month 
amusements," was the first outcome of that extensive study 
of Euripides undertaken some years earlier. It came out in 
August, when he was staying with friends, the Benzons, at 
Little Milton, up in the hills above Loch Tummel. He was 
full of a translator's eagerness, coming over to Tummel 
Bridge, where Jowett was staying, to talk to him about a 
new rendering of a phrase in the Alcestis, avxjjuipov ouooc, 

' From /?ed Cotton Night-Cap Ccuiiiry. 



244 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

which he preferred, with reasonable probability, to interpret 
as — 

" the floor 
unsprinkled as when dwellers loved the cool." 

This is prettier, at any rate, than to interpet avxfj-r^pov as 
" dusty " or " uncared-for." Swinburne was with Jowett, 
but, alas ! there was no Boswell present. Browning was also 
at work on his Napoleon poem, which appeared before the 
year was out.^ A greater contrast than that presented by 
Balaiistion^s Adventure and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau it 
would be difficult to conceive. The former is among the 
most lucid and direct of his poems, the latter among the most 
perplexing. No one could possibly misunderstand the one, 
plenty of people did misunderstand the other. An Edinburgh 
reviewer described it as an "eulogiumon the Second Empire," 
another critic called it "a scandalous attack on the old 
constant friend of England." Browning, as we have seen, 
always distrusted Louis Napoleon. He believed, however, in 
the genuineness of his desire to do something for Italy ; a 
desire maimed, when he came to put it in execution, by its 
owner's calculating temperament. The poem is neither an 
attack nor an eulogy ; but the kind of sophistical defence 
which an opportunist might ofifer for his opportunism. In the 
February of this same year 1871, at Chislehurst, the Empress 
Eugenie said to Colonel Brackenbury of her husband : — 
" History will yet give him the credit of having maintained 
order in France for twenty years." ^ This is practically what 
Hohenstiel-Schwangau is made to claim ; that he had been 
for that period, at the cost of certain abandoned ideals, the 
" Saviour of Society." 

It must be accepted as an instance of Browning's versa- 
tility that he could pass directly from Balaustion's glad, 
confident view of life, to that other dim, foggy atmosphere, 
in which the very forms of right and wrong are difficult to 
distinguish. 

The germ of this vision of the Hellenic world is derived 
from a passage in Plutarch's Life of Nicias, which tells how 

' Life and Letters of Benjamin yowett, vol. ii. pp. 12-13. 
- Memoir's of my Spare Time, by General Sir Henry Brackenbury, Blackwood's 
Magazine^ February, 1909. 



"BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE" 245 

a ship of Caunus, being chased by a piratical vessel, sought 
to make the harbour of Syracuse, and was at first refused 
admittance ; then, question being put whether those on board 
of her knew by heart any of the poems of Euripides, and such 
assurance given, was straightway suffered to come in. In 
this manner the Rhodian girl, Balaustion, who had by heart 
the Alcestis, "that strangest, saddest, sweetest song" of his, 
saves herself and her fellow-travellers. It is a curious fact 
that when Browning gave his Rhodian heroine that melodious 
name of hers, which signifies " wild pomegranate flower," he 
was unaware that this flower was actually the emblem of 
Rhodes ; he only learnt that it was so later, from the repro- 
duction of a coin in the British Museum given him by a friend. 
Balaustion's plight is her poet's opportunity ; he gives us, 
through her lips, his version of the Alcestis, a play whose 
theme must to him have been infinitely touching ; and not 
only so, but he intersperses comments of his own, for which 
he asks indulgence in a passage of rare grace and charm. 

" 'Tis the poet speaks : 
But if I, too, should try and speak at times, 
Leading your love to where my love, perchance, 
Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew, 
Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake ! " 

It is arguable that he has made Euripides mean more than he 
intended ; that there is a touch of modernity in his reading 
of Heracles and of Admetus ; but it can be maintained with 
equal cogency that he has made intelligible and beautiful to 
the modern mind much that was obscure and much that was 
repellent. And as the invocation, " O Lyric Love," expressly 
connects The Ring and the Book with his wife's memory, so is 
her name bound up with this transcript from Euripides, the 
poet whom she loved and hailed as pre-eminently human. It 
contains also a reference to one who had been her friend and 
was still his, who had designed her monument in Florence, 
Frederic Leighton. Leighton is the " great Kaunian painter " 
who "has made a picture of it all," It was now that his 
" Heracles struggling with death for the body of Alcestis," 
said to have been suggested to him by the restoration to 
health of a great friend whose life was in imminent peril, was 



246 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

exhibited at the Royal Academy. Browning was a frequenter 
of Leighton's studio ; he found more poetry in his pictures 
than in those of any contemporary artist ; and without doubt 
had watched the growth of this particular one, dealing as it 
did with a story which greatly attracted him, and which he 
was presently to make his own. 

Balaustion's Adventure had an immediate success. Within 
five months 2500 copies were in circulation, and a second 
edition was in the press ; "a good sale for the likes of me." 
Miss Browning told Domett that she and her brother con- 
sidered it the most popular of his works. Beautiful as the 
poem is, and worthy to be admired, it unquestionably owed 
some measure of its popularity to earlier triumphs, which had 
disposed the public to give its author a favourable hearing. 
For he had come into his kingdom, after a protracted 
minority, with Dramatis Personce ; and The Ring and the 
Book had crowned him. 



CHAPTER XIV 
NOTES FROM A DIARY 

Alfred Domett's return from New Zealand — His diary — His Ranolf 
and Amohia — Browning's description of Fifine at the Fair — He finds the 
subject for a new poem at St. Aubin — Red Cotton Night-Cap Country — 
R. H. Hutton's opinion of it — The limits of the horrible — The Inn Album 
— Browning and vivisection — Home's pension — Miss Egerton Smith — 
Aristophanes^ Apology — Unfair methods of criticism — Browning's 
vocation, according to Carlyle — His true province, according to Swin- 
burne — The Pacchiarrotto volume — Browning turns upon his critics — 
Domett's remonstrance — Browning unrepentant — Reminiscences of 
Shelley and Keats — Browning's Agamemnon — Domett's strictures — 
Death of Miss Egerton Smith — La Saisiaz. 

THE year 1872 brought loss to Browning by the death 
of one of his closest friends, Miss Blagden ; but it also 
restored to him the chosen companion of his earlier 
manhood. In February Alfred Domett returned from New 
Zealand after close on thirty years' absence. There he had 
risen to be premier, while not neglecting the pursuit of poetry. 
He came back, somewhat tired of politics, with a long poem 
and the purpose to find a publisher for it. From his return, 
until his death in 1885, he kept the diary from which quota- 
tion has already been made. In it Browning's name, as 
might be expected, repeatedly figures. 

He had written to his friend on Mrs. Browning's death, 
and received no answer. He had felt the silence, and the 
thought of it was with him on his first call at Warwick 
Crescent. Browning was out, but next morning Domett 
received the following letter, whose explanation and welcome 
were surely all that he could desire. " How very happy I 
am," it runs, " that I shall see you again ! I never could bear 
to answer the letter you wrote me years ago, though I carried 
it always about with me abroad, in order to muster up 



248 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

courage some day which never came ; it was too hard to 
begin and end with all that happened during the last thirty 
years. But come and let us begin all over again. My sister 
tells me how your coming may be managed most easily. 
Ever affectionately yours, Robert Browning." The letter is 
dated i March. Three days later, at Warwick Crescent, 
where was Milsand also, the old intercourse was renewed. 

At this, the first of many meetings, the talk was of 
old and recent days, and when they passed to present 
times and present social conditions the returned exile 
could hardly have had a more entertaining commentator. 
Browning, when they were in society together, pointed 
out to him many persons who had hitherto been but names 
to him, though most of them distinguished names ; George 
Lewes, for instance, " not strikingly intellectual looking, 
however remarkable for his talents " ; at the Athenaeum 
Coleridge, the Attorney- General, who expressed the wish that 
he could have got "the Claimant" a good flogging, Aubrey 
de Vere, Cartwright, and Herbert Spencer, with high-peaked 
forehead, reading in the library. Often they talked of poetry, 
Domett jealous for the inclusion of old favourites in the new 
selection Browning was making from his works, Browning 
pointing out that he must pick and choose. He went through 
the business, he explained, with reference to the imaginary 
life of a sort of man, beginning with one set of likings and 
fancyings and ending with another.^ Then, too, the fate of 
Domett's New Zealand Epic, Ranolf and Amohia^ was 
discussed. It is a long poem, some 14,000 lines. Smith 
declined it because it " would not pay " ; Murray on the 
ground that he "never had anything to do with poetry or 
sermons." At Browning's advice its author published it with 
Smith and Elder at his own risk ; and the advice was good, 
for handsome things were said of the poem, by Tennyson 
among others, and Domett was not out of pocket by it in the 
end. 

In April Domett notes in his diary : " Browning tells me he 
has just finished a poem, 'the most metaphysical and boldest 
he had written since Sordello, and was very doubtful as to its 

' The published preface says much the same : only that '* a sort of man " 
becomes "an imagined personality." A " second series" was added in iSSo, 





ALFRED DOMETT 

[1871] 



"FIFINE AT THE FAIR" 249 

reception by the public' " This was Fifine at the Fair ; and 
Browning's anticipation proved well grounded. Fifine was as 
fertile a source of misapprehension as Hohenstiel. To under- 
stand the poem it is necessary to remember, once more, 
Browning's fondness for putting a case, and his proneness to 
write " dramatically." If some reviewers and readers, as did 
happen, attributed to the poet the opinions upon love which 
he has put into the mouth of the Don Juan of Fifine, the mis- 
take arose from their ignoring these methods of his. He has 
chosen to imagine and to express the sort of justification for 
inconstancy which a subtle intelligence, with a bad heart 
behind it, might devise. It would be just as reasonable to 
saddle Browning with his Calibans religious scheme as with 
his Don Juan's conception of the laxity of the marriage-tie. 
Yet the mistake was made ; and this, too, though Fifine was 
introduced and closed by two short poems which breathe a 
passion of faithful remembrance, whose application, in the 
light of his own past history, cannot by any possibility be 
misconstrued. 

To take up the cudgels in defence of Byron, as the Times 
did, was at least more reasonable. Browning's old devotion 
to Byron has been mentioned, nor had he ceased to admire 
his poetry ; but one article of " the famous bard's " creed he 
found particularly unpalatable, his assertion of the soul's 
nothingness in comparison with the Ocean. This he attacks 
somewhat boisterously in Fifine, and again in La Saisiaz ; 
and, when Domett expressed surprise, averred that he pro- 
tested against it as a Christian. ** I never heard him, I 
think," comments the diarist, " avow his Christianity dis- 
tinctly in his own person, except on this occasion." 

By the time that the critics were puzzling their heads over 
his Fifine, he was once more at St. Aubin, occupying with 
his sister a tiny cottage 

" With right of pathway through the field in front, 
No prejudice to all its growth unsheaved 
Of emerald luzern bursting into blue," 

scrupulous, as he tells us, to 

" Keep the path that hugs the wall," 

as he " padded " from door to gate, on the way to his early 



250 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

morning bathe. Milsand was again his neighbour, and at 
Lion-sur-mer, five miles away, Miss Thackeray (now Lady 
Ritchie) was spending the summer. She it was who bestowed 
on this region the name of White-Cotton-Nightcap country, 
from the head-dress worn by its inhabitants, which seemed in 
harmony with the sleepiness of the land ; and it was to her 
that Browning, as they paced the sand together, told the story 
of Mellerio, the Paris jeweller, whose tragedy was played out 
in this quiet corner of Normandy, where a superficial glance 
would least expect tragedy to be found. On leaving St. 
Aubin he passed a month at Fontainebleau, when his chief 
reading was in .^schylus, the one book, perhaps, which Miss 
Thackeray saw in the St. Aubin cottage ; but he had at least 
one other with him, his friend's newly-published Ranolf and 
Amohia. From Fontainebleau, on i8 October, he wrote Domett 
a long letter in which he praises the poem highly. 

"I hope," he writes, " I am no more surprised at the achievement 
than is consistent with my always having held to the belief that 
whenever 'Waring' reappeared some such effect would follow the 
phenomenon .... Whether people accept it now, or let it alone for 
a while, in the end appreciated it is certain to be." 

When the friends met again in London, Browning reite- 
rated his expressions of approval, suggested that a copy 
should be sent to Carlyle (which had been already done), and 
agreed to send one to Tennyson from the author. Domett 
received, in course of time, an appreciative note from Tenny- 
son, which he showed to Browning, who considered it was a 
good deal for him to say. " When I sent him Fifine at the 
Fair, the only acknowledgment I got was, ' Received and 
welcomed.' " The diarist hastens to add : " I have, however, 
always heard him speak of Tennyson as most generous in his 
recognition of the claims and merits of others." 

Browning had also poetical news of his own. He said 
enthusiastically, " I have got such a subject for a poem, if 
I can do justice to it." This was the Mellerio story, picked 
up in Normandy, where it still was common talk, which was 
presently to appear under the title of Red Cotton Night-Cap 
Country. Mellerio's tragedy explains the substitution of 
♦' red " for white. Browning meant to devote himself to it 



"RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY" 251 

and not dine out for two months. In the end it occupied him 
only seven weeks, and was printed from the first manuscript 
as he wrote it off. " This," says Domett, " I think a great 
pity, though it may and does show his great facility and 
power of execution ; " and he quotes Sheridan's remark about 
easy writing and hard reading. 

An unexpected difficulty arose about publishing. All the 
incidents of the story being true to the letter, Mr. Smith got 
alarmed at the risk of an action for libel which might arise 
from certain passages reflecting upon the conduct of members 
of the " hero's " family and upon that of the bankrupt tailor 
who was the " heroine's " husband, disguised as the names and 
localities in some respects were. Could a Frenchman obtain 
damages for libel in this country, supposing the poem to be 
libellous .? The first lawyer consulted left the point doubtful. 
Browning then applied to his friend the Attorney-General, who 
thought that unless fictitious names were in all cases substi- 
stuted an action might lie. This was accordingly done, and 
the poem sent to press. Browning was a little vexed by the 
delay caused by the first lawyer's ambiguity, and jokiflgly 
remarked on the density of the legal intellect, declaring that 
" Poets were the clearest headed, after all." 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country appeared in May, 1873, 
Domett's diary afibrds a curious comment. " September 
16. Called on R. H. Hutton [of the Spectator\ He did not 
think there was a single line of poetry in Red Cotton Night- 
Cap Country. Certainly wrong there. I mentioned the 
allusion to Napoleon. He admitted this was." ^ 

* " Some dead and gone 
Notice which, posted on the barn, repeats 
For truth what two years' passage made a lie : 



And, woe's me, still placards the Emperor 
His confidence in war he means to wage, 
God aiding and the rural populace." 

Some retrospective comment on this poem is furnished by a letter which its 
author wrote, in"l888, to Mr. J. T. Nettleship : "I heard, first of all, the merest 
sketch of the story, on the spot : Milsand told me that the owner of the house 
had destroyed himself from remorse at having behaved unfilially to his mother : 
in a subsequent visit he told me some other particulars — and they at once struck me 
as likely to have been occasioned by religious considerations as well as passionate 
women-love. I concluded that there was no intention of connnitting suicide, 



252 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

What the reader of this poem and of The Inn Album , 
published two years later, will probably feel is, that they 
have more than their fair share of what is repellent and even 
horrible; yet their author had clear views as to the limits of the 
horrible in poetry. During Emerson's late visit to England, 
Browning had argued against his assertion that Shakespeare 
always avoided the horrible and the disgusting in his 
dramas. Browning did not believe that Shakespeare wrote 
Titus Andronicus, but he instanced the stamping out of eyes 
in Lear. He thought that it was Shakespeare's established 
pre-eminence of reputation that made the public accept murder 
scenes and revolting circumstances from him without disgust. 
Some one had submitted to him, as matter for a poem, the 
account of a very revolting episode in byegone days in 
Norfolk. He stopped in his reading of it to express his 
disgust at the subject. " Besides," he said to Domett, " it is 
very nearly the same as that of Horace Walpole's * Mysterious 
Mother.'" He dwelt upon the bad taste of choosing such 
themes for works of art. " As if," he said, " a painter should 
choose no colours to work in but blood red and lampblack." 

This conclusion is unimpeachable, but like other people 
Browning did not always practise what he preached. 
Gloucester's atrocious punishment in Lear is only tolerable 
because of Edgar's filial distress and care ; just as Regan 
and Goneril are endurable because of the contrasted nobleness 
of Cordelia. But in Red Cotton Night-Cap Country the sketch 
of Milsand is, so far as character is concerned, the sole relief 
in a desert of moral ugliness ; and in The Inn Allnim it is 
only a subordinate personage who lightens, for a moment, the 
prevailing atmosphere of gloom. Both narratives are un- 
questionably moral in their tendencies, in both the poet makes 
truth his main object : but he seeks truth so exclusively that 
beauty, an equally essential element of poetry, is neglected. 

About this time Browning received a Trans-atlantic com- 
pliment as characteristic as it was, from a monetary point of 
view, unprofitable. The Chicago Railway Company began 

and I said al once that I would myself treat the subject just so. Afterwards he 
procured me the legal documents, I collected the accounts current among the 
people of the neighbourhood, inspected the house and grounds, and convinced 
myself that I iiad guessed rightly enough in every respect." 




ROHERT UROWNINi; 

DATK UNKNOWN 
Ctot rSTJ 



TRANSLATING EURIPIDES 253 

to publish his works, part by part, as an appendix to their 
periodical time-tables, of which 10,000 copies circulated 
monthly. They began with Paracelstis. Taking up this edition 
at Warwick Crescent, Domett began to read aloud a passage 
which he considered for beauty of imagery and fervour of 
diction its author had never surpassed. It is that which 
ends : — 

" To me, who have seen them bloom in their own soil, 
They are scarce lovely : plait and wear them, you ! 
And guess, from what they are, the springs that fed them, 
The stars that sparkled o'er them night by night, 
The snakes that travelled far to sip their dew ! " 

Browning listened attentively, and then remarked : " If I had 
written those lines nowadays, I wouldn't have left such a 
defect in them as those rhyming endings ' you ' and ' dew ' in 
blank verse." Domett, who had known them by heart for 
nigh on forty years, and had never noticed the rhyme, thought 
this comment hypercritical. 

Browning had now (July, 1873) returned to Euripides. As 
the friends crossed the Park one afternoon he repeated the 
whole plot of the Hercules Furens which he had just been 
translating, collating four editions as he went along. " I 
think," writes Domett, 

"he made the story more affecting than it is either in the 
original or in his own subsequent version ... He was full of 
the pathos of the scenes in Euripides, particularly of that in which 
Hercules becomes conscious of what he has done and comments 
upon it passionately to Theseus." 

He gave Domett a copy of each of his new books as 
they were published, also the Tauchnitz edition of his poems 
so far as it had appeared — it began in 1872 — and that of the 
Selectiofis from Mrs. Browning's poetry and of her Aurora 
Leigh. He said oi Ranolf and Amohia, " My appreciating 
your book is only like appreciating myself." Talking of 
critics, he said there was not a single one living whose opinion 
he valued " a snuff." 

He again this year passed the early autumn at St. Aubin. 
During the winter his son, encouraged thereto by Millais, 
determined to take seriously to painting as a profession. 



254 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Nothing could have pleased Browning better. He had 
himself, as he repeated to Domett, " always envied the life 
of a painter." He took the keenest interest in his son's 
artistic studies, which were pursued at Antwerp, and the 
greatest delight and pride in the success which in course of 
time attended them. The new year found him in capital 
spirits, as Domett testifies. 

" Feb. 3, 1874. Dined at the Miss Svvanwicks, Regent's Park. 
Browning there, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, a young poet named 
Gosse, and others. Miss Cobbe very animated, clever and jovial, 
looking rather like a Dan O'Connell in petticoats, her dress a loose 
kind of purple satin jerkin, her face square and ruddy. She and 
Browning got into a lively discussion as to good or evil pre- 
ponderating in human life generally, Browning taking the optimistic 
view of the matter and ending, * Well, I can only speak of it as I 
have found it myself ' ; which did not satisfy Miss Cobbe. He told 
me he had dined with the Chief Justice, Sir A. Cockburn, a fortnight 
since ; and had been present during the whole of his summing up 
on the Tichborne Case." 

Upon one subject, vivisection, Miss Cobbe and he were 
quite agreed. " I would rather," he had said to her in 
Florence, " submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, 
than have a single dog or cat tortured on pretence of sparing 
me a twinge or two." To this opinion he adhered consis- 
tently, as is shown by the Tray of 1879, and a letter written in 
1883, in the course of which he says: *' If I were not com- 
mitted by an inveterate habit of abstention from all public or 
quasi-public meetings ... I would be present at yours ; but 
whoever cares to know does by this time know how much I 
despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous 
practise — Vivisection." The ^^r^^^i- Am bo of his final volume 
expresses precisely the same view. 

His old acquaintance, R. H. Home, who, besides being a 
poet, had done some public service in Victoria, had fallen on 
evil days, and found it necesary to apply for a Civil List 
pension. Browning, with many other leading literary men, 
signed the petition. Happening to meet Gladstone at Alton 
Towers, he pressed the point upon him, backed up by Lady 
Marion Alford. Gladstone thanked them, and made a memo- 
randum, but nothing came of it. It was reserved for his 



MISS EGERTON SMITH 255 

successor in the Premiership to grant the pension in the June 
of this year. "Gladstone ought not to have let slip this 
piece of graceful justice," comments Browning, in the course 
of a congratulatory letter to Home, " but the gods are against 
him just now,"^ 

During the summcrholiday of this and the three following 
years (1874-1877) Browning and his sister joined forces with 
Miss Anne Egerton Smith. The acquaintance had begun in 
Florence. Miss Smith, who now lived in London, had con- 
siderable private means, being part proprietor of the Liver- 
pool Mercury. She went little into society, but was a great 
lover of music. This was the main bond of union between 
her and Browning; every important concert found them 
together in the audience ; but she was also the possessor of 
sterling qualities, behind a reserved exterior, as readers of 
La Saisias know. Mers, a sea village on the outskirts of 
Tr^port, was the trio's choice this year ; followed in turn by 
Villers-sur-Mer, the Isle of Arran, and the Saleve district, 
near Geneva. Browning published nothing during 1874 ; but 
he finished his Greek play, and at Mers, where nine weeks 
were spent, worked hard at AristopJianes' Apology, in which it 
is introduced. 

The following spring his portrait was painted by Rudolf 
Lehmann, at the request of Frederick Lehmann, his brother, 
and exhibited at the Academy. A little later his Aristophanes' 
Apology appeared, a work remarkable for the extensive 
knowledge it displays, both of the plays of Aristophanes 
and of what the scholiasts said about them. Of the manner 
of its reception let the diary speak : — 

" Called on Bro^vning, found him and his sister at home. We 
talked about his new book, and how some of the critics had abused 
it. The most virulent of these, he said, had written attacks upon it 
in three different periodicals — misquoting passages and designedly 
leaving out words or lines so as to make absolute nonsense of them. 
It was the old story, 'Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.' I 
remarked, however, upon the large demands Browning makes in 
this book on his readers' knowledge, and said that I believed no one 
would be able to understand all the allusions without referring over 
and over again to the Comedies : and that he thus wilfully restricted 

' Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 27. 



256 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the number of his readers to comparatively few. He would not hear 
of explanatory notes ; said it could not be helped, but that he was 
not likely to try anything of the kind again. This reminds me of 
the way in which he dismissed his ' experiment ' in play-writing in 
Bells and Pomegranates in 1845 or '6." 

He had a further grievance against the critics. In the 
Athenceum it was suggested that Aristophanes' Apology was 
"probably written after one of Mr. Browning's Oxford 
symposia with Jowett." Upon this several other reviev/ers 
reported the poem to be " the transcript of the talk of the 
Master of BalHol " — " whom," he assures a correspondent, " I 
have not set eyes on these four years, and with whom I 
never had a conversation about Aristophanes in my life. 
Such a love of a lie have the verminous tribe ! " ^ 

Nor is the praise awarded to a poet always happy. Seated 
on the hearthrug at Cheyne Row, with a screen between his 
face and the fire, and smoking his pipe as he talked, Carlyle 
told Browning that he liked Aristophanes' Apology much, but 
asked why he did not tell it all in plain, straightforward 
statement ? " As if," Browning exclaimed, in describing his 
visit, "this did not make all the difference between a poet's 
treatment of a subject and a historian's or a rhetorician's ! " 
It must have been a bit of Carlyle's banter. Domett thought. 
At any rate, Carlyle appreciated Browning's transcripts from 
Euripides, for he said to him not very long after, " Ye won't 
mind me, though it's the last advice I may give ye ; but ye 
ought to translate the whole of the Greek tragedians — that's 
your vocation." Browning did mind him, however, to the 
extent of translating one play, to gratify his venerable 
mentor, as his Agamemnon and its preface show. 

Aristophanes' Apology^ memorable for the reappearance of 
the delightful Rhodian girl, Balaustion, and for the justice 
done to two great exponents of the tragic and the comic 
muse, was speedily replaced in its author's mind by another 
and this time a modern subject. Of this, and of other 
matters which were engaging his attention, his friend's diary 
gives us an idea. 

"July 24. Met Browning in Westbourne Terrace. Walked 
with him. He had seen Tennyson the day before. He had 
' Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 34. 



SOURCE OF "THE INN ALBUM" 257 

expressed an opinion strongly in favour of Tennyson's play of 
Queen Mary. ... He had received in acknowledgment of this 
what he called a ' charming letter,' which he shortly described. He 
expatiated on Tennyson's hearty appreciation of the merits of 
brother poets. . . . He had received a picture from Pen, ' his first 
composition,' an old man contemplating a skull. . . . He complained 
of being bilious ; had been hard at work. ' Why don't you rest ? ' 
said I. * We shall have time enough to rest by-and-bye.' . . . He 
had finished nine-tenths of a new poem already." 

This was the Inn Alb?im, which came out in November, 1875, 
and of which the diary (9 December) has more to say : — 

"Calling on BrowningTound him confined to the house by a bad 
cold. ... He looked rather paler than usual, but was as animated 
as ever. 

*' He seemed to have seen all the critiques on T/ic Inn Album, 
laughed at some abuse in the Guardian on the style, confessed to a 
slip in grammar noticed by the Saturday Review. Talking of the 
plot he maintained that there was sufficient motive for the young 
man killing the old one, who had attempted to make him the 
instrument of degrading the woman he was in love with under threat 
of ruining her. He said the nucleus of the story was actual fact : 
he had heard it told thirty odd years ago of Lord de Ros. He 
wrote the poem in two months. Smith and Elder told him that 
HOC copies out of an edition of 2000 had already been sold. He 
had intended originally to write a tragedy upon the subject, but 
hearing Tennyson was engaged upon one {Queen Mary) gave up 
the idea. 

'•He congratulated himself on having got rid of his American 
publishers, who had neglected to send the money they had agreed 
to pay for his last work for a considerable time after it was due. 
He had now had the pleasure of telling them that the New York 
Times had paid him double the money they offered him for the new 
poem, and he could do without them. It appears accordingly in 
that paper, seven columns of it at a time. 

" He did not much admire Rossetti's poetry, ' hated all 
affectation.' He laughed at the cant about the ' delicate harmony ' 
of his rhymes about the Haymarket. He quoted Buchanan's parody 
of them, adding a line or two of his own, similarly rhymed : 

' But grog would be sweeter 
And stronger and warmer,' etc. 



258 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

" I was mentioning the absurdity of the praise some one had 
bestowed on the idea in Rossetti's Blessed Daniozel of the Damozel's 
arm resting on the bar of Heaven and making it warm, a fancy after 
all originally and infinitely better given in Sordello, where Palma 
throws her scarf upon Sordello ' her neck's warmth and all.' He 
said he was afraid I was going to quiz the notion with a similar case 
a lady had told him of the other day ; how, she having a bad cough 
in church, an old gentleman sitting next her pulled a lozenge out of 
his waistcoat pocket and offered it to her, ' quite warm, and redolent 
of old churchwarden.' 

" We were interrupted by a great screeching at the back of the 
house. ' Ah, there are my pets,' said Browning. They were two 
geese. 'They are such affectionate creatures, and I am sure it is 
not for what one gives them.' " 

Although the AthencBum^ strange to say, rated the Inn 

Album higher than The Ring and the Book, as a w^hole 

Brov^^ning had lost ground in general estimation since the 

publication of his great poem. The series of psychological 

studies beginning with Fifine at the Fair had perplexed and 

alienated many minds ; nor is it likely that posterity will put 

any one of them on a level with the best of his earlier work. 

More remarkable is it, therefore, that it was these very 

studies which captivated Swinburne, who took no pleasure in 

Browning's plays or lyrics. Of Fifine he said, " This is far 

better than anything Browning has yet written. Here is his 

true province." One fruit of this development of taste in 

Swinburne was the enthusiastic appreciation of Browning's 

poetry which finds a place in the introduction to Swinburne's 

edition of the poems of Chapman, published in this year. 

It amazed, we are told, some of Swinburne's friends, and 

bewildered Browning as much as it gratified him. Copies of 

Pacchiarotto, Agamemnon and La Saisiaz, presented to 

Swinburne by their author, attest his grateful recognition 

of a brother-poet's glowing tribute. But the temperaments 

of the two men were inharmonious, and their acquaintance 

never ripened into friendship. It may be added that in 1879 

Browning, all unwittingly, gave great offence to Swinburne 

by accepting the presidency of the New Shakespeare Society, 

of which Swinburne was the sworn enemy.^ 

* Smnhume ; Personal Recollections. By Edmund Gosse, Fortnightly Revieiv , 



HE BELABOURS HIS CRITICS 259 

Pleasant as the praise of a fellow-craftsman was, it could 
not altogether atone for the hasty and unfair criticism which 
had assailed him from other quarters. It is no wonder that 
he grew tired of " slaps in the face " apparently dealt him " in 
order," as he puts it, "to keep some fellow's critical hands 
warm." * Later on he grew indifferent to such treatment. 
When, in 1887, a correspondent forwarded to him a so-called 
criticism from the pages of a provincial newspaper, he replied, 
with praiseworthy equanimity, 

" I am quite sure you mean very kindly, but I have had too long 
an experience of the inability of the human goose to do other than 
cackle when benevolent, and hiss when malicious ; and no amount 
of goose criticism shall make me lift a heel at what waddles behind 
it." 2 

But in 1878 his mood was not so peaceable. Nor is it 
apparent why a man may not defend his literary repute from 
unfair attacks, as he would his moral character. Browning 
determined, as Byron did before him, to trounce his detractors 
handsomely ; and trounce them he did. 

The unsuspecting reviewer who turned the pages of 
Pacchiarotto, making notes by the way upon the jerkiness 
of its metre and the crudity of its phraseology, must have 
undergone painful emotions of surprise when he found, with- 
out a moment's warning, himself and his pretensions gibbeted. 

" I have told with simplicity 
My tale, dropped those harsh analytics 

(those, that is, of Fifine and its successors) 

And tried to content you, my critics, 
Who greeted my early uprising ! " 

And then follows an audacious apologue. It is May 
morning, the critic-sweeps are assembled in their wonted 

June, 1909, When Browning died, the younger poet wrote a noble set of 
appreciative sonnets. " But this," adds Mr. Gosse, " was a late literary exercise, 
and part of the extraordinary ' funereal ' taste of Swinburne, who had a passion 
for delivering imperious demands for the immortality of persons recently deceased. 
And of course he knew that Browning was a great poet ; and probably he felt 
that in his lifetime he had not consistently done him justice." 

' Wise, ut mpra, vol. i. p. 90. 

- Wise, Jit supra, Second Series, vol. ii. p. 52, 



26o THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

disguise, trampling on the flower-beds in the poet's garden 
and pressing upon him their uninvited services. He 
appears at his window and lets loose upon them a torrent of 
boisterous ridicule and invective, half jest, half earnest, good- 
natured in the main, but rather savage at the close. Who 
could stand up under such a cataract ? We actually see the 
unwelcome visitors, buffeted, belaboured, deafened, making 
off as quickly as they can from so tempestuous a neighbour- 
hood. 

Combative methods of this nature are obviously liable 
to be regarded differently by different people. Domett, in 
deprecating them, probably voiced the feelings of many other 
readers of the Pacchiarotto volume. He thought them hardly 
worthy of the poet ; contemptible attacks were, in his 
opinion, better unnoticed. But Browning stuck to his guns ; 
he declared that the allusion to a particular critic, with which 
the tirade closes, was a mere piece of fun, indulged in once in 
a way. 

" He has been flea-biting me," he wrote, " for many years past in 
whatever rag of a newspaper he could hop into — which I should 
never have turned on my side to escape ; but there was talk of 
'administering castigation to poor Mr. Browning,' which I have 
never brought myself to acquiesce in, even in metaphor. ... I 
don't mind leaving on record that I had just that fancy about 
the people who * forty years long in the wilderness ' criticized my 
works." 

After this onslaught upon his critics he proceeds, in two 
other poems of the Pacchiarotto volume, to apologetics of a 
less militant character. In At the ''Mermaid" he enters a 
just protest against the fallacy of identifying a dramatic 
writer with the children of his fancy, in House claims that 
respect for the privacy of his inner life which is the right of 
every human being. The Epilogue, with its contention that 
the wine of poetry cannot at once be sweet and strong, is less 
convincing ; since it is easy, without going further afield, to 
refute the doctrine out of Browning's own writings. The 
Epilogue is his last printed word to his critics, save for the 
brief and good-humoured postscript to the controversy in 
the Pambo of 1883, from which quotation has been already 
made. 



HIGH-PRIEST OR RABBI? 261 

The volume has the further interest of being the first 
collection of miscellaneous poetry which he had published 
since Dramatis Persojm ; and of the pieces which it contains 
several are up to his highest lyrical and dramatic standards ; 
notably the beautiful Prologue, Appearances, A Forgiveness, 
and Ninnpholeptos. The description of the " arms of Eastern 
workmanship " in A Forgiveness was suggested by a collection 
of such weapons bequeathed to him by his friend Ernest 
Benzon — "daggers of various kinds," so Domett describes 
it, " Italian, Portuguese, Malay creases, a long silver-chased 
Turkish pistol, etc. The hilt of one sword had been set with 
valuable jewels." Such "horror coquetting with voluptuous- 
ness " pleased Browning well, both on the score of rarity and 
suggestiveness. 

In Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial, a master- 
piece in its kind — he always wrote admirably when he wrote 
of Jews — the narrator describes the old spokesman Jew as 
High Priest, whereas Rabbi should be the term used. In a 
discussion on the poem the error was pointed out and attri- 
buted to Browning, whereupon he took up his parable : — 

"This comes of forgetting that one writes dramatically. The 
speaker, Baldinucci, is a typically ignorant Tuscan, and makes the 
gross mistake already noted in Arbuthnot's Martimis Scribkrus — of 
whom it is said, at the very beginning, ' Those who had never seen 
a Jesuit took him for one, while others thought him to be rather 
some High Priest of the Jews.' Somebody," he continues, 
" objected to a Jewish burying-ground being in the neighbourhood 
of any habitation, but Baldinucci tells the story, and describes the 
locality as he knew it — and I follow him, of course." * 

Of the origin of Cenciaja he writes : — 
" I got the facts from a contemporaneous account I found in a MS. 
volume containing the * Relation ' of the Cenci affair — with other 
memorials of Italian crime — lent me by Sir J. Simeon, who 
published the Cenci Narrative, with notes, in the series of the 
Philobiblion Society. It was a better copy of the * Relation ' than 
that used by Shelley, differing at least in a few particulars." ^ 

' Wise, ut supra. Second Series, vol. ii. p. 6i. Baldinucci wrote a History of 
Art, and the story told by the poet as " a reminiscence of 1676" appears there in 
a notice of the life of the painter Buti. The episode of the intervention of the 
Rabbi's brawny son is Browning's own. 

- Wise, hC supra, vol, i. p. 43. 



262 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

To Shelley his thoughts recurred at this period owing to 
an interchange of letters with Mr. Buxton Forman, who was 
preparing his library edition of that poet's works. It will be 
remembered that a copy of Keats' Lamia was found in the 
drowned Shelley's hand. 

" Leigh Hunt told me," Browning writes, " that the Lamia was 
the only copy procurable in Italy. That he lent it to Shelley with 
due injunctions to be careful of the loan on that account, and that 
Shelley replied emphatically : ' I will return it to you with my own 
hands.' He told me also of the consolation there was to him in 
the circumstances that the book had been found in Shelley's bosom, 
together with the right hand — evidently thrust there, as his custom 
was, when, having been struck by any passage in whatever book he 
might be reading with a friend, he paused to enjoy and pronounce 
upon it. This circumstance Leigh Hunt considered decisive as to 
the suddenness and comparative painlessness of the death. It is 
altogether incompatible with the truth of the silly story put into 
circulation recently. [That is, that he was murdered.] On my 
asking Leigh Hunt if the book still existed, he repUed : ' No, I 
threw it into the burning pile ; Shelley said he would return it with 
his own hands into mine, and so he shall return it.' I confess to 
having felt the grotesqueness of a spirit of a duodecimo as well as 
that of a man. I remember Leigh Hunt was standing by a piano 
when he told me this. He had been singing to his own accompani- 
ment the old Stanco di pascolar Ic pecordle. I observed : ' Do you 
know Shelley has mentioned that air ? ' He did not, though he said 
it had been a great favourite with Shelley." * 

Of the last days of the author of Lamia he had heard 
much from Joseph Severn, whom he knew in Italy. One 
day Severn found Keats, who was studying Italian, deep in 
Ariosto. " Fine, isn't it "i " he said. " Yes," answered Keats, 
sadly ; then, tapping his own forehead, " but there's some- 
thing here that could equal it, if they would give me but a 
chance." Domett, to whom Browning repeated this incident, 
believed that he would have made good the assertion, had he 
lived. " I believe it too," said Browning ; and then expressed 
a very high opinion of his extraordinary powers of imagina- 
tion and of the beauty of his diction. Home, Domett 

' Wise, tit supra, vol. i, pp, 48-9. Shelley alludes to the air in the Triumph 
of Life; where Mary ShcUcy added a note in explanation. 




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TO PLEASE CARLYLE 263 

remarked, remembered Keats at Edmonton, when apprenticed 
to a surgeon there ; and how he used to wait for his em- 
ployer outside the houses where he visited, " sitting in his 
gig, holding the reins, and looking half asleep." 

Browning's own contribution to verse in 1877 was his 
translation of the Agajnonnon, largely undertaken from a 
wish to please Carlyle, who was gratified at the manner in 
which he is mentioned in the preface.-^ One who approaches 
the Aganiemno7i with a determination " to be literal at every 
cost, save that of absolute violence to our language" can 
hardly expect to please widely ; moreover, the metre chosen 
to represent the iambic trimeters of ^schylus must strike 
any reader of the original as curiously infelicitous. It would 
seem that Domett was among those who were a little restive. 

" I asked him, supposing on his own theory that the English 
version ought to be as difficult to English readers as the Greek 
original was to the Greek ones, and the Greek avowedly required the 
Greek notes of the Scholiast to render it intelligible — whether it 
was not reasonable to give English notes to his translation, that 
English readers might understand it. He agreed that notes might 
be necessary, and said he had no objection to any one else making 
them. This, however, should have been done in the first instance. He 
mentioned that, while engaged upon his work, he met one of the 
first Greek scholars in England, who asked him if it were true that 
he was translating the Agamemnon. Browning answering in the 
affirmative, the other said, 'And can you understand it? For I 
have known it these twenty years, and I can't.' " 

His summer holiday this year had closed very tragically. 
Together with his sister and Miss Egerton Smith he was 
staying at a little villa. La Saisiaz (the sun), at the foot of 
the Saleve, four or five miles S.W. of Geneva. An ascent of 
the mountain by carriage had been arranged. The friends 
had parted over night in the best of spirits, and, seemingly, 
of health. What followed may be told in Miss Browning's 
version, as Domett reports it. 

" Browning had been for his usual bathe in a pool among trees 
down the mountain-side, and on returning found Miss Smith had 

^ The task was, says the preface, " commanded of me by my venerated 
friend, Thomas Carlyle, and rewarded will it indeed become if I am permitted 
to dignify it by ihc prefaratory insertion of his dear and noble name." 



264 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

not made her appearance. * All right,' he thought, ' she is saving 
herself for the journey.' Miss Browning going into her room to 
look for her, found the poor lady lying with her face downwards 
upon the floor. She put her arm round her, saying, ' Are you ill, 
dear ? ' then saw that she was insensible. It was three hours before 
a doctor could be procured, they having to send to Geneva for one." 

He could have done nothing, however, had he been close 
at hand, for Miss Smith w^as dead. After her burial at the 
neighbouring village of Collonge, the brother and sister 
returned to England, in no mood for further holiday. It was 
some time, his friends remarked, before Browning recovered 
his usual spirits. The sad experience through which he had 
passed bore fruit presently in the tender and beautiful poem 
called La Saisiaz. Therein may be read many details lacking 
in his sister's account. The " travelled friend," who was to 
have gone with them on the expedition that fatal morning, 
was a Frenchman, M. Gustave Dourlans. The poem has 
many facets ; it is autobiographical, elegiac, and reflective. 
It abounds in glowing description of Alpine scenery, in 
intimate personal touches, and in splendid rhetorical passages. 
It must, to those who welcomed its appearance in 1878, have 
seemed a return to all the poet's finer characteristics. It is 
no mere hard, intellectual performance ; not a thing seen, but 
a thing felt. The debate on the soul's immortality, subtle 
as it is, is yet suffused with emotion. And this is doubly 
natural, not only because of Miss Smith's death, but because 
she and Browning had a few days before been discussing this 
very subject, which from June to October had formed the 
theme of a " symposium " in the Nineteenth Century. Among 
those who took part in it were Mr. Frederic Harrison, R. H. 
Hutton, Huxley, Lord Blachford, Roden Noel, and W. G. 
Ward. The later pages of La Saisiaz may be regarded as 
charged with Browning's contribution to this 

" fence-play — strife. 
Certain minds of mark engaged in ' On the Soul and Future Life.' " ^ 

* The Epilogue to the La Saisiaz volume, it may be noted, can be traced to 
the Anthology, where there occur two versions of the Cicada story, one under the 
name of Paulus Silentiarius (6.54), the other (9.584) anonymous. 




I.A SALKVE, OVERLOOKlNi; THE ARVE AND RHONE VALLEY 

WHAT URdWNINi; CALLS THE " MAZV AK\'E " IS SEEX WINDING HELOW. THE DISTANT MOUNTAINS 

ARE THE JURA MOUNTAINS, BEHIND WHICH THE SUN IS SEEN SETTING FROM THE CHALET OF 

LA SAISIAZ, WHERE THE I'OET STAYED IN 1877 



CHAPTER XV 
THE LAST DECADE 

Italy once more — Intermediate halting places — The SpUigen— Gres- 
soney — St. Pierre de Chartreuse — Browning revisits Asolo — and Venice 
— Dramatic Idylls^ first and second series — A note on Clivc — Death of 
Carlyle — The Browning Society — How Browning viewed it — He visits 
Oxford and receives the D.C.L. — Impressions of an eye-witness — PunclCs 
shrewd lines — Jocoscria — A growl from Domett — Mrs. Arthur Bronson — 
Browning's Venetian days — FerishtaWs Fancies — Visit to Edinburgh — 
At Llangollen— Death of Domett— and of Vi.\\%7\.nA—Parlcyini^s ivith 
Certain People of Importance in their Day — A subject for verse declined 
— Browning's health gives cause for anxiety — The Rezzonico palace — 
His last visit to Oxford — and to Cambridge — Third and last sojourn 
at Asolo — At Venice — Catches cold on the Lido — Brief illness — Death 
— Asolando published — Impressive ceremonial in Venice — Burial in 
Westminster Abbey. 

IN the year of the publication of La Saisia:; Browning 
had the satisfaction of seeing his son's status as a 
painter recognized. Already, two years earlier, Frede- 
rick Lehmann had given a handsome price for a study of 
a monk reading a book ; now "The Armourer" was hung in 
the Academy and found a purchaser in Mr. Fielden, a 
member of parliament, with whom neither the artist nor 
his father was acquainted. The private view of "Pen's" 
pictures at a house in Queen's Gate Gardens, where a room 
was lent for the purpose, became an annual event, to which 
Browning was wont to bid all his friends. It was on one of 
these occasions that he failed at first to recognize in a well- 
dressed visitor his own cook ; and on discovering her identity 
did the honours of the exhibition without the least embarrass- 
ment and with, if anything, an added touch of cordiality. 

He had now been self-exiled from Italy for seventeen 
years. The intention to return had been only dormant ; and 
the year 1S78 saw it at last fulfilled. At the Splugen, where 



266 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

he broke his journey, the keen air and wild scenery found 
him in the vein : he there wrote, as has been mentioned, 
Ivan Ivdnovitcli, and also Ned Bratts, having in his mind, in 
connexion with the latter, the story of " Old Tod," as told 
in Bunyan's Life and DeatJi of Mr. Badman} He never 
went further south than Venice ; but Venice, from this time 
forward, drew him with a sure attraction each successive 
autumn. Only thrice was he an absentee, when circum- 
stances were too strong for him ; a flooded country in 1882, 
and his sister's illness in 18S4 and 1886. The first halt on 
the Spliigen proved so restorative that it became his habit 
to spend five or six weeks in the mountains, amid whose 
solitudes he breathed in new life and refreshment after the 
social exigencies of the London season, before descending to 
the plain. 

"Six weeks in this delightful solitude, with one day only to 
prevent our leaving the house ! On every other morning and after- 
noon we have walked right and left, never less and often more than 
five hours a day — and the good to us both, I hope, certainly to 
myself, is in proportion. At Venice we shall be social, however, 
and I cannot expect to return with as florid a pair of cheeks as 
I occasionally get glimpses of in the glass." "^ 

Thus he wrote from Gressoney St. Jean in 1883, the 
delightful Gressoney " of the prologue \.o FerishtaU s Fancies^ 
rich in those country products on which he loved to fare 
when on his travels. In another letter he describes it as — 

" a beautiful place indeed, a paradise of coolness and quiet, shut in 
by the Alps ; just under Monte Rosa with its glaciers." 

The difficulty of attaining to this paradise added zest to 
the endeavour. 

" From Jura to Pont St. Martin by two hours' carriage-drive, and 
thence seven continued hours of clambering and crawling on mule- 
back. And just so shall we have to descend when time comes and 
snow falls." ^ 

But whether on mule-back or afoot, Miss Browning was 
as constant and tireless a companion to her poet-brother as 

' Wise, /// supra, vol. ii. p. 7. - IHd, p. 24. 

' Wise, Secottii Sciies, vol. i. p. S4. 



IN THE MOUNTAINS 267 

was Dorothy Wordsworth to hers ; and cheerfully accepted 
such primitive accommodation as happened to satisfy his 
taste. Thus at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, their place of sojourn 
in 1 88 1 and 18S2, the "hotel" was "the roughest inn, and 
its arrangements the most primitive, I have yet chanced upon 
— but my sister bears them bravely " ; a roughness, no doubt, 
which was a small matter in comparison with "the extra- 
ordinary picturesquencss and beauty of the wild little clump 
of cottages on a mountain amid loftier mountains." ^ Another 
attraction was the neighbourhood of the Grande Chartreuse, 
where Browning would stay the night in order to hear 
Midnight Mass. This, privilege, however, was denied to 
his sister. Another of their summer haunts was St. Moritz. 
There they were the guests, in 1SS4, of an American friend, 
Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, at the Villa Berry. "We have 
walked every day," writes Browning, " morning and evening 
— afternoon, I should say — two or three hours each excursion, 
the delicious mountain air surpassing any I was ever privileged 
to breathe."^ And from the same place, three years later, 
describing an August snowstorm : — 

" we are * snowed up ' here this morning ; cannot leave our house to 
go to the hotel opposite, close by, where we get our meals ! Our 
amends is in the magnificence of the mountain, and its firs black 
against the universal white . . . exactly such a snow-storm as I 
happened to read of in the Iliad this morning, the only book I 
brought with me. . . . The days slide away uneventfully, nearly^ 
and I breathe in the pleasant idleness at every pore. I have no new 
acquaintances here — nay, some old friends — but my intimates are 
the firs on the hill-side, and the myriad butterflies all about it, every 
bright wing of them under snow to-day, which ought not to have 
been for a fortnight yet." ^ 

Such were his halting-places on his way to Venice, in- 
vigorating alike to mind and body. But before Venice, 
Asolo. He trod the streets of Asolo in 187S after an absence 
of over forty years. From the ruined castle on its hill-top 
he sought and found a remembered echo ; with such echoes, 

» Wise, ut siipray vol. i. p. 69. Both Gressoney and St. Pierre were recom- 
mended by M. Dourlans, the " travelled friend " of La Saisiaz. 
- Wise, /// supra, vol, ii. p. 37. 
' Ibid, p, 71. 



268 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

be sure, of his poetic youth as do not faint into nothingness, 
but " grow for ever and for ever." 

After a short sojourn here he removed to Venice, putting 
up at a quiet hostelry, the Albergo dell Universo, where he 
again lodged in the three ensuing years. He was not slow 
to determine that Venice should always in future be the goal 
of his autumnal pilgrimage. No other place seemed half as 
satisfying. 

The Dramatic Idylls of 1879, a worthy successor to 
Dramatis Personce, showed that increasing years had not 
undermined his vigour or diminished his poetic faculty. The 
wine is as strong as ever and, in Pheidippides at least, as 
sweet. As much can hardly be said for the Dramatic Idylls : 
Second Series, of the ensuing year, though Clive is great 
enough to atone for much inferior work. Of the origin of 
this poem Domett's diary has the following account : — 

" Referring to that most vivid and thoroughly realistic narrative of 
T.ord Clive and his duel, Browning told me he heard it first from 
Mrs. Jameson, soon after his marriage. Mrs. Jameson said she had 
it from Lord Lansdowne, to whom it had been told by Macaulay. 
The idea of what Clive would have done [viz. blown his own brains 
out] had his antagonist (after CHve's pistol was accidentally dis- 
charged, leaving Clive at his mercy) generously given him his life, at 
the same time reiterating his innocence of the cheating Clive had 
charged him with, instead of throwing down his pistol and confessing 
it — all this, he said, was merely his own invention, which he had no 
authority for, or for attributing it to Clive himself. ' But what else,' 
said he, 'could such a man as Clive have done? He could not 
have reasserted the charge, unless as a calumniator, for no one 
would have believed a man so magnanimous could have been 
capable of cheating at cards.' He added that he had only 
very recently read Lord Macaulay's article on Clive, and had 
looked up other authorities, but had not found the duel anecdote 
recorded anywhere. One would like to know how Macaulay got 
hold of it." ' 

A little later (February, 1S81) death severed his long 
acquaintance with Carlyle. A fortnight or so earlier 
Browning had called at his house, and had seen him lying 

' Macaulay, however, while giving no details, does mention "a desperate 
duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David." 







KNTRANCK CATK, ASOl.O 

0\ THE I.EI'T, nUll.T ON TIIIJ CITV WAl.I., IS " I.A MUKA," MKS. liRONSON S HOUSE. 
I'HI! roi' OK THE CASIT.E IS JUST SEEN OVER THE i;ATE\VAV 



THE BROWNING SOCIETY 269 

on the sofa in " a comatose state," so would not let him be 
disturbed. Carlyle, he told Domett, was anxious to die. 
Froude's subsequent "disclosures" awoke Browning's strong 
resentment. He refused to believe that Carlyle was other 
than the most tender-hearted of men. He was fond of 
telling how when once he was walking with him they were 
passed by a butcher-boy "savagely leathering his horse," 
and how Carlyle exclaimed with passion, " Ah ! if I could 
only get at that brute ! " 

It was in this year that Browning received one of the 
greatest compliments ever paid to an author : the foundation, 
in his lifetime, of a Society for the study and discussion of 
his works and for the wider diffusion of the knowledge of 
them. The Browning Society of London, which had presently 
allied branches in other parts of the United Kingdom and in 
America, was the joint creation of Dr. F. J. Furnivall and 
Miss Emily Hickey. What Browning thought of the move- 
ment is explicitly stated in several letters which, happily, 
have survived. The first of these, written to Miss West 
(now Mrs. Dowden), and dated 12 November, 1881, has the 
following passage : — 

" I will tell you how I feel about the Society. It was instituted 
without my knowledge, and when knowledge was, I do not think 
acquiescence had need of being asked for. I write poems that they 
may be read, and — fifty years now — people said they were unintel- 
ligible. If other people, in the fullness of days, reply ' we under- 
stand them, and will show that you may, if you will be at the pains,' 
I should think it ungracious indeed to open my mouth for the first 
time on the matter with ' Pray let the other people alone in their 
protested ignorance.' I see a paragraph in The World to the effect 
that none of my personal friends figure in the list of members. Had 
I persuaded them to do so, the objection would have been more 
cogent, ' only a clique — the man's personal following ! ' 

" Exactly what has touched me is the sudden assemblage of 
men and women to whose names, for the most part, I am a stranger 
who choose to incur the ridicule sure to come readily to the critics 
who dispose of my works by the easy word 'unintelligible,' instead 
of saying safely to themselves * / understand it — or something of it — 
anyhow ! ' That there would be exaggeration in the approval was 
to be looked for ; they react against a good deal. 

" As for Dr. Furnivall, I am altogether astonished at his caring 



270 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

about me at all. I suspect it is a late discovery with him — like that 
of Fontenelle when, chancing upon some out-of-the-way literature, 
he went about asking everybody, 'Do you know Habbakuk? He's 
a genius ! ' I think him most warmhearted, whatever may be the 
mistakes about me of which his head is guilty ; and as Lear's last 
instance of ingratitude is that of the mouth biting the hand for 
lifting food to it — so, it seems to me, would as signal an one be 
the writer of books that are commonly pronounced unintelHgible, 
objecting to the folk who propose to try that question." ^ 

To Dr. Furnivall, in 1882, when certain journals affected 
to sympathize with him on being made ridiculous by the 
Society, he wrote : — 

" Pray don't imagine I can't understand the mock compliments 
to myself pretended to be involved in the censure of those who make 
so thoroughly appreciated a person ' ridiculous ' : the ridiculus mus 
is the inveterate nibbler at, and spoiler of a man's whole life's labour, 
which might otherwise go to the bakehouse and prove tolerable 
ship-biscuit." " 

And about the same date he gave Edmund Yates the 
memorable assurance, 

" As Wilkes was no Wilkeite, I am quite other than a Browningite. 
But," he adds, " I cannot wish harm to a society of, with a few 
exceptions, names unknown to me, who are busied about my books 
so disinterestedly. . . . That there is a grotesque side to the thing 
is certain ; but I have been surprised and touched by what cannot 
but have been well-intentioned, I think." ^ 

Finally, that the debates of the Society, and its perform- 
ances of several of the plays, not only spread a knowledge of 
Browning's poetry, but had a substantial effect on the sale of 
his works, is attested by a letter written in the last year of his 
life to J. T. Nettleship. 

" When all is done," it runs, " I cannot but be very grateful for 
the institution of the Society ; for to what else but the eight years' 
persistent calling attention to my works can one attribute the present 
demand for them ? 

" If Johnson showed his good sense in telling somebody who 

^ Wise, ut supra. Second Series, vol. i. p. 64. 

- Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 97. 

* Wise, ut supra, Secotui Seru's, vol. i. p. 81. 




KOliERl liROWNING 
(1885] 



HONOURED AT OXFORD 271 

deprecated the appearance of an adverse criticism on something he 
had just brought out, ' Sir, if the critics did not notice me, I should 
starve ' — well, I am justified in fancying that, but for what was done 
by Furnivall and his colleagues, I should have no more readers 
than ten years ago." ^ 

Such an effectual helper to the poet was the Society which 
existed to do him honour and service. 

On the completion of his seventieth year another dis- 
tinction awaited him, the University of Oxford conferring 
upon him the honorary degree of D.C.L. In the course of 
the ceremony an undergraduate jester let down from the 
gallery a red cotton nightcap, and dangled it above the new 
doctor's head. He was like to pay severely for his prank, 
but Browning interceded with the Vice-Chancellor, and the 
culprit was forgiven. An observer who watched the pro- 
cession to the Sheldonian remarked how lightly Browning 
carried his seventy years, how briskly he stepped along, in his 
new red gown, with head thrown back and eyes on the 
buildings, roofs, and sky. The same observer (Mrs. Arthur 
Sidgwick) had met him at Balliol the previous evening. 

" He took me down to dinner," she writes, " and on the stairs I 
discovered the kind, blue-eyed man to be friendly and not formid- 
able. He talked on any subject ; we selected the Cherwell water- 
rats, which interested us both ; but I was all the time trying to get 
him to talk of his wife, and, as far as I remember, we spoke of 
Florence and of Venice. He gave one the feeling of being never to 
be old ; 2 and the gentlest, dearest of men ! " 

Punch, which always " treated him gently," as he said, 
took occasion to publish his " fancy portrait," a clever sketch 
by Sambourne, as " Robert Browning, D.C.L., The Ring and 

' Wise, ut supra. Second Series, vol. ii, p. 74. One indirect benefit should be 
mentioned : the writing of Mrs. Sutherland Orr's valuable handbook to Robert 
Browning's works. The poet himself wrote of it :— " I should say that Mrs. Orr's 
Handbook is anything but a hindrance, rather the best of helps to anyone in need 
of such when reading — or about to read — my works. It is done far better than I 
could hope to do it myself." Letter to Mr, R. M. Leonard, 21 January, 1889. 

- So also Lady Ritchie in her Records, etc. : " He was always young, as his 
father had been before him." The epithet " blue-eyed " will be remarked ; it 
should be "gray-eyed," but it is not always easy to distinguish between grayish- 
blue and bluish-gray. Mrs, Browning, oddly enough, described Athene as the 
blue-eyed {yXauKwiris) goddess, a rendering not usually accepted. 



272 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Book-maker from Red Cotton Night-Cap Country." Many a 
true word is spoken in jest, and two stanzas of the verse 
which accompanied the portrait are interesting as a con- 
temporary estimate of his position. The parody of his own 
At the ** Mermaid" is at once apparent. 

" Though the world may cry out, frowning, 

* Hard is he to understand ! ' 
See societies called ' Browning ' 

Flourish largely in the land. 
I'm too crabb'd, confus'd, and mystic 

So brays out each kindly ass, 
Sounds his trumpet eulogistic, 

'Opci)("^'^o5 — made of brass. 

" Let the world wag on, these letters 

Show one poet's got his due ; 
I've received them like my betters, 

Smaller men have gained them too. 
But, in spite of all the stir made, 

Put the robes upon the shelf: 
I've my corner at ' the Mermaid ' 

With ' rare Ben ' and Shakespeare's self" 

He had been for some time guardian, so to say, of the 
memory of an earlier poet, Thomas Lovell Bcddoes (1803- 
49), all whose papers, together with correspondence referring 
to him, had been bequeathed to him by Kelsall, Beddoes' 
executor. Beddoes' life was an unhappy one, and Browning 
felt great difficulty in dealing with these memorials of it. 
The time, indeed, was not ripe for such an adequate account 
of the dead poet's career as a study of them indicated. 
Mr. Edmund Gosse, Browning's near neighbour in London, 
might well, he conceived, undertake the responsibility. It 
was Mr. Gosse's habit to pay him an early visit on his way to 
his work ; and on one of these visits the contents of " that 
dismal box," as Browning called it, were unreservedly handed 
over to his custody and discretion. 

"A collection of things grav/^/; and gay/j//t — hence the 
title Jocoseria — which is Batavian Latin, I think." ^ Such is 
Browning's own description, in 1883, of his new volume of 

' Wise, tit supra, vol. ii. p, 12. 




y, -■ 



A GROWL FROM DOMETT 273 

miscellaneous verse. Its longest piece, Jochanan Hakkadosh, 
was misunderstood in certain quarters. It will be remembered 
that Jochanan's days are prolonged by the self-sacrifice of 
some of his disciples. But no physical process is supposed to 
be entailed. It was here that misapprehension arose. 

" I got an American paper last night," wrote Browning, " wherein 
there is repeated that Jochanan revived by ' a transfusion of blood.' 
There is not a word about such a thing ; on the contrary, the 
account in the poem makes it impossible. How could the * trans- 
fusion ' bring experiences with it ? Or how could the boy's gift, 
' which he threw and it stuck,' be taken in that manner ? This 
comes of the critics reading attentively the criticisms of their 
brethren, and paying no attention at all to the text criticized. The 
writer of the article in the Times made the mistake first, and even 
the Academy article must needs follow him. The whole story is a 
fiction of my own, with just this foundation, that the old Rabbins 
fancied that earnest wishing might add to a valued life." ^ 

The rebuke is just. The poem in question, however, is by no 
means one of its author's clearest ; and it is worth remarking 
that Domett's comment on the volume, in his diary, is a pro- 
longed growl. After criticizing the " defect of perversity in 
the use of words," he concludes, glancing at the phraseology 
of the introductory lines, 

" It is questionable whether the poet would not have gained 
more admiration as well as given more pleasure had he conde- 
scended to attract the vast numbers his obscurity repels, by ' com- 
pleting his incompletion ' and letting his meaning ' pant through ' the 
beauty of his poem a little more decidedly and distinctly." 

One poem, which would certainly have graced its pages, 
Jocoseria did not include ; a translation of a German lyric, 
made about this time for a friend, Mrs. R. Courtenay Bell, for 
inclusion in her English version of von Hillern's novel, The 
Hour will come? 

The pleasure of the Brownings' annual visit to Venice had 
latterly been enhanced by their acquaintance, which ripened 
into friendship, with an American lady, Mrs. Arthur Bronson. 
When, in 1882, financial ruin came upon their Albergo, she 

* Wise, ut supra ^ vol. ii. p. l6. 

• See Appendix A. 



274 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

put at their disposal a suite of rooms in the Palazzo 
Giustiniani Recanati, which, says Mrs. Orr, formed a supple- 
ment to her own dwelling, and would take no refusal. Here 
the brother and sister kept house, only dining and passing the 
evening with their friend ; but during later sojourns they 
occupied an apartment under her own roof. Mrs. Bronson 
has left an account of Browning's Venetian days;^ of his 
explorations of the byways of the city, his repeated visits to 
the Public Gardens, where his friends were the wild creatures 
in captivity there, his delight in hunting the curiosity shops 
for bargains, and his joy in walking on the Lido, " even in 
wind and rain." There he would take the keenest pleasure in 
the magnificent sunsets, and, as he writes to a friend, in " the 
break of sea on the strip of sand, as much as Shelley did in 
those old days." ^ Venice, whether in its work-a-day or its 
holiday garb, equally fascinated him ; he would comment on 
the beauty of the street children, and, remarking on a work- 
man's well-cut features, would pronounce them worthy of one 
of Tintoret's senators. And Venice, for her part, was not 
careless of his presence. When, in 1S83, a statue of Goldoni, 
the dramatist, was erected, he was asked to write a word or 
two for insertion in an album to which the principal men of 
letters in Italy had contributed. " I made a sonnet," he says, 
"which they please to think so well of that they preface the 
work with it." ^ It was written rapidly, but bears no mark of 
haste. Published in the Pa// JlLr// Gazette of 8 December, it 
has been reproduced in no edition of his works, but deserves 
to be remembered both on account of its excellence, and in 
testimony of his appreciation of the sound and colour of 
Venetian life. 

"Goldoni — good, gay, sunniest of souls — 

Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine — 
What though it just reflect the shade and shine 
Of common life, nor render, as it rolls, 
Grandeur and gloom ? Sufficient for thy shoals 
Was Carnival : Parini's depths enshrine 
Secrets unsuitcd to that opaline 
Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. 

' Published in the Cenluty AfagaziHtf vol. 63, pp. S7S-9. 
* Wise, lit s^n/'ra, vol. i. p. 85. 
' Wise, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 35. 




MRS. A kill UK I'.RONSON 



VENETIAN DAYS 275 

There throng the people : how they come and go, 
Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb — see — 

On Piazza, Calle, under Portico 

And over Bridge ! Dear king of Comedy, 

Be honoured ! Thou that didst love Venice so, 
Venice, and we who love her, all love thee ! " 

There was, indeed, another side to the picture. His love 
for Venice made him the more indignant v^^ith the vandalism 
of some of her citizens. 

" Everybody who can block up a window, brick over a moulding, 
or other apparently useless ornament, does so ; or, better, disposes of 
it — a balcony, well, or such like fixture — to the Jew antiquity- 
mongers. It is really an argument against the throwing open 
museums and galleries to the people on Sundays that here, where 
the works which glorify such institutions were originally produced, 
and where similar excellences may be still seen every day, the 
inhabitants have the worst taste in the whole world." ^ 

Something may be allowed here for a touch of the spleen ; 
at any rate, " though much is taken, much remains " ; Venice 
was still Venice, and unrivalled. 

FerishtaJis Fancies, its author's matured speculations on 
some of the deepest things of life, appeared in 1884. In this 
year Edinburgh University, on the occasion of its tercen- 
tenary, followed the example of Oxford and Cambridge, and 
conferred upon him an honorary degree. He was the guest 
of Professor Masson, whose daughter has since published her 
impressions of the visit, and remained in Edinburgh nearly 
a week, charming everyone by his accessibility, good-humour, 
and unflagging spirits. Once Miss Masson observed him 

" standing silent, facing and looking down upon a shorter man, who 
looked up at him and spoke eagerly and excitedly. Mr. Browning's 
expression was one of mild and benevolent kindliness, with a hint 
of humour behind the smile. And the words of the shorter man, as a 
passer-by overheard them, were : 'The ^^i-/thing I ever wrote ' " 

The shorter man's name has, mercifully, not been preserved. 
Another afternoon, at a conversazione held in the Museum 
of Science and Art, when he and a companion, a little 
embarrassed by the attentions of the crowd, found themselves 

' Wise, tU supra, vol. ii. p. 27. 



276 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

face to face with a large glass case containing a stuffed lion, 
his friend was fain to whisper, " Mr. Browning, it seems as if 
you would be safer if yo7i were in that case instead of that 
other Hon ! " But when, a little later, his hostess asked him 
apologetically, " Do you object to all this adulation ? " he 
answered, anxious, no doubt, to set her apprehensions at rest, 
" Object to it ! No ; I have waited forty years for it, and 
now — I like it ! " But what he liked best of all was the. 
tremendous reception which the students gave him. Indeed, 
it so moved and touched him, that for once he broke through 
his invariable rule. He, who alike at a lord mayor's dinner 
and in hall at Balliol — though in the latter place R. L. 
Nettleship tried to tempt him by describing him as "one 
who had touched nothing which he had not struck fire out 
of" — had refused to answer for "literature," on this solitary 
occasion was persuaded to reply — for himself. In a very 
few words — the only " public speech " with which he is to 
be credited — he thanked them.* 

In the following year his son, who had not visited Venice 
since his childhood, was with him there. Ambitious plans 
were the sequel of this sojourn. 

"I have been kept thus long here," Browning writes (17 November, 
1885), "by the business of buying a Venice Palace, the Manzoni 
Palazzo, of which you may see an account in the guide books. I 
think, with many or most of them, that it is the most beautiful house 
— not the biggest nor most majestic — in Venice. I buy it solely for 
Pen, who is in love with the city beyond anything I could expect, 
and had set his heart on this particular acquisition before I joined 
him, quite unaware that I had entertained a similar preference for 
it years ago. Don't think I mean to give up London till it warns 
me away ; when the hospitalities and innumerable delights grow a 
burden, even as we are assured the grasshopper will eventually do 
in the case of the stoutest of us. Pen will have sunshine and 
beauty about him, and every help to profit by these, while I and 
my sister have secured a shelter when the fogs of life grow too 
troublesome." 

A hitch occurred, however, in the negotiations. The vendor 
drew back, believing he could get a better offer. Browning 

* Robert Brmvning in Edinburgh, by Rosaline Massor, published in CornkiU, 
February, 1909. 




I'KO.M IHK 



ROISERT 1:R()\VN1N(; 

•AINlINi; m' lUDOl.PH l.EHMANN IN lilK NATIONAl. I'ONINAII (.Al.l.KKV 



GAINS AND LOSSES 277 

went to law with him, to make him carry out his contract ; 
but afterwards, on learning that the main walls, hidden by 
tapestry when he saw them, were cracked and the founda- 
tions shaky, he gave up, paid his costs, and withdrew from 
the action.^ 

Next summer his sister was ill, and they did not go 
abroad ; but spent eight or ten weeks at the Hand Hotel, 
Llangollen, where Miss Browning's health was happily 
restored. They had old friends as neighbours. Sir Theodore 
and Lady Martin. Each Sunday afternoon Browning was 
to be seen in the little old church at Llantisilio, and after 
service he would accompany the Vicar to the Martins' house, 
there to spend the evening. 

" A term of delightful weeks," he called it in retrospect, " each tipped 
with a sweet, starry Sunday at the little church, leading to the 
House Beautiful, where we took our rest of an evening spent always 
memorably." ^ 

Yet a shadow was cast upon these quiet days by the death 
of Milsand, whose health had for some time been failing ; a 
loss the heavier to Browning in that a bare twelvemonth 
earlier his oldest friend, Alfred Domett, had passed away. 

There are several important landmarks in 1887. In the 
spring appeared Parleyings zvith Certain People of Iinportance 
in their Day, his penultimate volume, the reminiscent 
character of which has already been discussed. It need only 
be added that in Francis Furini the handling of the ever- 
recurrent subject of the nude in art was suggested to him by 
some objections raised to a picture which his son had lately 
painted of Joan of Arc standing beside a pool, where she is 
about to bathe. 

In June he left Warwick Crescent for a much better and 
roomier house in De Vere Gardens ; and in October occurred 
the marriage of his son. At St. Moritz, in August, he was 
well and in good spirits, after slight indisposition, as several 
letters prove. To Dr. Furnivall, who had suggested as a 
subject for poetic treatment the incident of a fisherman pro- 
mising to take the pledge if the lady who pressed him 

' Wise, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 46. 
' Mrs. Orr, Life, p. 406. 



278 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

to do it would strip like Godiva and swim to him, he replied, 
as wittily as decisively — 

*' Oh, for your subject — really it is not versifiable — sufficient to the 
deed is the prose treatment thereof. Besides, since she could swim 
a mile with ease, the reward of the feat was surely in itself during the 
hot weather of last month : 

Accoutred as she was not, plunging in, 

She watered, so to speak, the boatman's gin." 

Of the achievement itself he adds : — 

" Is it so wonderful ? I think I could have managed it once upon 
a time^ but I gave up swimming because of a peculiar affection of 
the throat — real strangulation — if the salt water got into it ; and I 
rather aimed at long continuance in the sea, than going away from 
shore. Pen could have performed the feat with ease. But I thought 
your approbation went to the fact that she stripped and swam to win 
over a sottish fellow to leave his bestiality, and I hold that if he 
were unamenable to the ordinary reasons why he should cease to 
make a beast of himself, his life was not worth saving at any price ; 
and I, for my part, would have refused, 'accoutred as I was, to 
plunge in ' — unless I bade him follow, sure that he would go to the 
bottom. Such a fellow, after exacting such a sacrifice, would be 
sure to get drunk the next day on the strength of his having made a 
fool of her." ' 

In the winter his health for the first time gave serious 
apprehension to his friends. One severe cold followed 
another ; but he made light of them, and in the intervals 
went about his ordinary avocations. The spring of 1888 
found him stronger, and occupied with a final revision of his 
poems. They appeared in monthly volumes, and the series 
was completed in July, 1889. The mountain halting-place 
chosen for the summer was Primiero, in the Dolomite Alps. 
Thither he set out in August, though, as he was suffering 
from an affection of the liver, the journey proved a very 
trying one. At Primiero, however, which seemed to him 
even more beautiful than its predecessors, he recovered in a 
few days, pronouncing himself " absolutely well " ; and his 
subsequent Venetian sojourn was prolonged beyond its usual 
limit. His son had bought the Rezzonico palace, which was 

' Wise, rti supra, vol. ii. pp. 73 ei seq. 




o S 




ROBKRT BROWNING 

[iSSg] 



AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 279 

an additional source of interest. It was February, 1889, 
before he was again in London. 

Looking back on the completed life of man or woman, it 
often seems that their later actions were, all unwittingly to 
themselves, in the nature of farewells. In this, his last 
summer, Browning made the circuit of his favourite haunts. 
It had become his custom to visit Oxford in Commemoration 
week. Mr. A. L. Smith recalls that on one such occasion, in 
1879, he came to a ball at Balliol and sat on the dais beside 
Jowett, the two looking " like a pair of sphinxes," as some 
one said ; and that he said it interested him to see the 
dancing. He used often to say how much he regarded him- 
self as an intimate friend of the College, and he was particu- 
larly eager to hear about everything that concerned Jowett 
or illustrated his character. Now, at the same season, he was 
at Balliol once more, and much in the society of the Master. 
His last words to a friend on leaving Oxford were : "Jowett 
knows how I love him." A little later he was at Cambridge. 
Mr. Gosse, who sat with him in a secluded corner of the 
Fellows' Garden at Trinity, recalls that he was in a quiet, 
retrospective mood, talking principally of old Italian days ; 
and then, some episode instinct with latent drama cropping 
up, the "shaping spirit of imagination " asserted itself, and 
he was showing, with his usual animation, how he would from 
these materials build up a poem. The i8th June, Mrs. Orr 
records, found him paying his customary visit to Lord 
Albemarle, the last surviving officer who fought at Waterloo. 
And one of the last letters he wrote before leaving England 
was to congratulate Tennyson on reaching his eightieth birth- 
day. It is the summing-up of the love and admiration of 
many a year. 

Another letter, written a httle earlier, shows that he still 
did not shrink from social engagements, and that he had not 
lost his sympathy with youth and charm. It is to Frederick 
Lehmann's daughter, and tells how he met the Shah at 
dinner, and how the monarch asked him for a volume of his 
poems. 

" I have been accordingly this morning to town, where the thing 
is procurable, and as I chose a volume of which I judged the binding 
m ight take the imperial eye, I said to myself, ' Here do I present 



28o THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

my poetry to a personage for whom I do not care three straws ; why 
should I not venture to do as much for a young lady I love dearly, 
who, for the author's sake, will not impossibly care rather for the 
inside than the outside of the volume ? ' So 1 was bold enough to 
take one and offer it to you for your kind acceptance, begging you 
to remember in days to come that the author, whether a good poet 
or no, was always, my Alma, your affectionate friend, 

"Robert Browning" 

There is one other note, a very brief one, which may here 
fittingly find a place in further witness of the graciousness 
of old age. A schoolgirl, an entire stranger to the poet, was 
set, as a task, to write an explanation of Prospice. Dissatisfied 
with her attempt, she ventured to send it for his inspection. 
He returned it with sundry corrections and the following 
comment : — 

" There, my dear young lady, I have done the little that was neces- 
sary, and hope it may suffice. Affectionately yours, 

•' Robert Browning " 

When the season for migration came he was disinclined 
for long travel, and thought of letting Scotland take the 
place of Italy ; but pressing invitations, from Mrs. Bronson 
at Asolo, and from his son, now installed in the Palazzo 
Rezzonico, turned the scale. The journey was accomplished 
safely and without discomfort. 

Round the minute, ancient city of Asolo there 'creeps 
and winds an almost ruined wall ; and niched in one of its 
eighteen towers, resting partly upon the wall, half found in 
existence, and half constructed, stands " La Mura," Mrs. 
Bronson's summer refuge from the heat of the plains. The 
apartment provided for her guests, consisting of a couple of 
bedrooms and a little sitting-room where the poet wrote, is 
just the other side of the way. On the outside of the building 
is a tablet, thus inscribed: "In questa casa abito Roberto 
Browning summo poeta inglese, vi scrisse Asolando, 1889." 
La Mura opens on the street ; but its most delightful feature 
is the loggia on its outer side, with walls of sliding window- 
frames, commanding those near and distant prospects which 
had captured Browning's imagination on his first visit, and 
which on his last proved equally enthralling. Immediately 




'■iS.^-^ ^ 




^^-1*^: 



vi^i^^^5>5^. 



MAIN STREET OK ASOLO 

A VIEW TAKEN FROM THE CORNER OF MRS. BRONSOn's HOUSE, BY THE ENTRANCE GATEWAY. 

THE ROOMS OCCUPIED liV DROWNING IN l88g, WHENCE HE DATES HIS DEDICATION OF " ASOLANDO," 

ARE OVER THE SECOND AND THIRD ARCHES ON THE RIGHT. THE TAISLET TO THE I'OBT IS 

VISIBLE OVER THE THIRD ARCH 



LAST SOJOURN AT ASOLO 281 

to the north is the palace of Queen Catherine Cornaro (" Kate 
the Queen "). To its right rises the campanile of the former 
Duomo, now a Capuchin church, and near it a four-storyed 
house which is certainly the " Palace by the Duomo," sup- 
posed the residence of the Bishop's brother in Pippa Passes. 
On one side are the Alps, all around are the Asolan moun- 
tains, and westward, beyond rippling hills, the vast plain of 
Lombardy. In the words of Shelley : — 

" Beneath is spread like a green sea 
The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
Bounded by a vaporous air 
Islanded by cities fair." 

And before the distance melts into that " vaporous air " 
there is discernible many an old stronghold, each familiar to 
the poet's memory. 

The place teemed for him with recollections of the old 
chronicles which he had studied for Scrdello, even their 
Italian phraseology coming back to him across the inter- 
vening years ; and Pippa was not forgotten, as he wandered 
amid the scenes which her passing by has rendered memor- 
able. He took delight in everything ; in the performances 
of a company of strolling players, in the basking lizards, in 
walking — although tried at times by a difficulty of breathing 
— and in his afternoon drive; but above all in the sunsets 
viewed from the Loggia, which he would never miss. The 
Loggia was, indeed, his favourite resort. Here were his 
evening hours passed ; in one corner of it stood an old spinet, 
on which he would play ; or he would read aloud from 
Shakespeare, Shelley, or his own Pompilia. His talk was 
as copious as ever ; yet he seemed, his hostess remarked, 
purposely to avoid deep and serious topics. " If such were 
broached in his presence, he dismissed them with one strong, 
convincing sentence, and adroitly turned the current of con- 
versation into shallower channels." So charmed was he with 
Asolo that he entered into negotiations for the purchase of 
such another site, with the shell of a building upon it, as 
Mrs. Bronson's ; which, by a strange fatality, were only con- 
cluded, and favourably, upon the day of his death. One 
more element of pleasure in his stay at Asolo was that 



282 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Story was there, to whom his parting words, as he left for 
Venice, were : " We have been friends for forty years." ^ 

He reached Venice on i November, and was full of satis- 
faction in his son's new home. There the proofs of his last 
volume, Asolando, reached him. The title, derived from a 
fanciful word whose invention he imputed to Queen Cornaro's 
secretary, asolare, " to disport in the open air, amuse oneself 
at random," connects it also with a place where several of 
its numbers had been lately written. Browning continued 
apparently in health, and assured a physician whom he met 
at dinner that such was the case. Half jokingly he held out 
his wrist to this new acquaintance, who, on feeling his pulse, 
knew that this confidence was ill-founded. Late in the 
month he returned from his customary walk on the Lido with 
a cold, which speedily became bronchitis. On i December 
he consented to see his son's doctor. The bronchial trouble 
was largely overcome, but symptoms of heart failure followed. 
He had looked forward to years more of activity ; but on the 
last evening he was aware of his condition. That very day, 
in London, Asolando^ with its strikingly appropriate Epilogue, 
was published. A message came across the wires of its very 
favourable reception, evinced both by reviews and the 
demand for copies of the book. The sick man was able to 
receive the news, and to take pleasure in it At ten o'clock, 
on the night of 12 December, "without," in his son's words, 
" pain or suffering other than that of weakness or weariness," 
he passed away. 

When all was over, the question as to the place of burial 
had to be decided. Florence seemed to his family most 
appropriate, but further interment in the English cemetery 
there had lately been forbidden. Thereupon Venice might 
have been chosen ; but the matter was decided by a proposal 
from Dean Bradley that he should be laid to rest in West- 
minster Abbey. On Sunday, 15 December, after a private 
service in the Rezzonico, the body, in accordance with 
Venetian requirements, was taken to the mortuary island of 
San Michele. The ceremony was of a public character and 
in the highest degree impressive; a flotilla of gondolas 

^ Several of the above details are derived from Mrs. Arthur Bronson's Browning 
in Asolo, Century Magazine, April, 1900. 




PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE 

BROWNING OCCUl'lED THE RdO.M ON THE GROUND FLOOR DURING THE BEGINNING OF HIS ILLNESS! 

AS THIS, HOWEVER, WAS OVERSHADOWED HV THE LOWER HOUSES TO THE SOUTH, HE W'AS REMOVED 

TO THE SUNNIER ROOM AT THE TOl' OF THE PALACE. HERE HE DIED. BOTH ROOMS ARE THE 

CORNER ONES ON THE LEFT OF THE PICTURE 



THE FINAL SCENE 283 

following in the rear of the funeral barge. Two days later 
its burden was removed from the island chapel, by night and 
privately, to the railway station at Venice, and so to London. 
On the last day of the year, amid a great and reverent 
assemblage of Robert Browning's countrymen, with the 
spiritual presence of his wife suggested by the chaunting of 
her beautiful stanzas, " He giveth his beloved sleep," Poets' 
Corner received one poet more. 

Thus Venice restored to London her distinguished son ; 
but, for reminder to future generations of what had been, she 
caused a tablet to be affixed to the outer wall of the Palazzo 
Rezzonico, stating that he died there, with this most signi- 
ficant couplet added : — 

" Open my heart and you will see 
Graved inside of it, Italy." 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE MAN AND THE POET 

A consistent character — Tenacity of Browning's affections — His talk 
— Horror of affectation — Depth of feeUng — Love of music— Modesty — 
Appreciation of others' work — His wide reading — His exactness in money 
matters — An old-fashioned liberal — Subject to passionate outbursts — A 
dinner-party incident — Breach with Forster — The FitzGerald episode — 
Devotion to his wife's memory — Religious opinions — Spiritual optimism 
— Appearance in younger and in later days — The question of his obscurity 
considered — Accesible to friendly criticism — On his own poetry — His 
great period— His extensive range — His place in literature. 

IF a man's traits do not continually assert their presence 
throughout the pages of his biography, that biography 
is naught. The reader of the foregoing narrative has, 
it is hoped, received upon the retina of his mind an impres- 
sion of its central figure which at least approaches clearness. 
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say a series of impres- 
sions ; for only at the close is it possible to gather into one 
harmonious whole those several characteristics, displayed at 
different times and on different occasions, which go to the 
making of a personality. A more finished portrait is now 
to be attempted, towards the completion of which sundry 
episodes will contribute whose earlier introduction would have 
delayed the course of the story. 

An impartial student of the character of Robert Browning 
can hardly fail to be struck with its consistency. With him, 
emphatically, the child was " father of the man." The 
tendencies of his boyhood are all found developed in his 
maturity. For this the manner of his education (in the 
widest sense of the term) is largely accountable. He was 
allowed to grow; no effort was put forth to make of him 
something other than he was by nature. 

His affections, according to universal testimony, were 



QUALITY OF HIS TALK 285 

remarkably tenacious, equally within the four corners of his 
own family and the large circle of his friends. Those who 
lost his regard were very few, and the severance was their 
fault, not his. In social intercourse he was direct, cordial, 
and sincere. Not jealous in limiting his acquaintance, he 
regarded every new-comer as a possible friend. He disliked 
foolish people as much as another ; indeed, the expression, 
" What a lot of fools there are in the world ! " was not un- 
common in his mouth ; but mere foolishness did not incur his 
resentment. Those who were introduced to him as admirers 
of his works he would welcome, literally and figuratively, 
with both hands outstretched. To women he was invariably 
courteous. To the young and to the " lesser people " he was 
always kind and never condescending. He sought to put 
every one at his ease and to give every one his due. But he 
knew also what was due to himself, and resented any approach 
to familiarity. 

His talk was clear enough, whatever may be said of his 
writings ; and he talked copiously. He would converse freely 
on all general topics, but with regard to the deeper problems 
of life he had a great deal of reserve. He was intensely 
interested in the texture of life, in the progress of the world, 
in anything and everything that his friends were doing. He 
would give a fillip to the dullest party. He liked to offer 
advice about affairs, and his advice was commonly worth 
having. There was about him a brave optimism of spirit, 
which infected those he met. People felt the better and the 
stronger for his presence. "After talking with him," says 
one who had a heavy burden to bear, " I used to feel that I 
could at any rate hold up my head for the rest of the day." 
" It was always," writes Mr. Comyns Carr, " a spiritual re- 
freshment to meet him. ... By means hardly definable he 
contrived to keep his converse, even with the most common- 
place of his acquaintance, on a certain high spiritual level." 
This is to exercise a great power. Again, his talk owed 
much to his wide reading and fine memory ; and he had 
an unfailing fund of good stories which he told with point 
and spirit. Lord Leighton spoke of him as "a never- 
failing fountain of quaint stories and funny sayings." ^ Miss 

' Life, vol. i. p. 146, 



286 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Cobbe remarked the same thing at Florence. Mr. Sidney 
Colvin remembers him at Cambridge keeping an under- 
graduate breakfast-party in a roar of laughter with doggerel 
rhymes and good stories; he also recalls the elbow-nudge 
which to an individual listener emphatically pointed the 
anecdote. His repartees were ready and effective. When 
TheophrasUis Such was under discussion, and he was asked 
for some account of the literary methods of the Greek writer 
after whom George Eliot's philosopher was named, "To give 
an example," he said, turning to a girl who had just before 
greeted him with a compliment on his looks, " Theophrastus 
would say, * A flatterer is such an one as, meeting an old 
man of seventy, congratulates him on looking young and 
well.' " 1 

In all this there is nothing peculiarly characteristic of the 
poet ; and indeed the sister arts of painting and music 
probably usurped a larger share of his conversation than did 
poetry. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that he 
never spoke of it ; indeed, we have seen the contrary ; but he 
reserved its discussion for his intimates. He had a horror, 
carried almost to excess, of assuming anything like a bardic 
pose ; indeed he seemed, in general society, anxious not to be 
reminded, or to remind others, that he was a poet. But in 
moments of noble enthusiasm of which a few were witnesses, 
when he would move a listening group to tears by his reading 
oi Attdrea del SartOy or would recite with fire Smart's Sojtg to 
David or his own Thamuris Marching, then, indeed, the 
disguise or armour of daily life fell from him, and the true 
poet was revealed.^ There were great depths of emotion 
underneath the polished surface. As he sat with friends, who 
still remember it, in a box at Covent Garden, listening to 
Salvini in Lear, his face grew gradually paler, till at last tears, 
of which he seemed unconscious, ran down his cheeks. " I 
almost think," he said afterwards, " that the actor is as great 
as the poet." ^ 

' Mr. Wilfrid Meynell in the At/iencrum, 4 January, 1890. 

- The fine lyric, Thamuris Marchitig, is embedded in Aristophanes^ Apology. 
For the story, see Iliad ii. 594-600. 

' His admiration of Salvini was unbounded. He told Mr, W. M. Rossetti that 
he had seen the actor in CEdipus, and that it was absolutely the finest effort of art he 
had ever beheld ; not only the finest in the art of acting, but in any art whatsoever. 



HIS MODESTY 287 

Of his lifelong love of music much has been already 
said, but one or two further illustrations may be added. 
When, in the autumn of i860, Mr. W, M. Rossetti called 
upon the Brownings at Siena, in company with Vernon 
Lushington, whom Browning had not met previously, the 
talk fell upon the compositions of Ferdinard Hiller, which 
Lushington commended. " Ah, now I understand who you 
are," said Browning. " When I find a man who shares with 
me a liking for Hiller's music, I can see into him at once ; 
he ceases to be a stranger." " I don't know whether you 
care for music, Mr. Browning," said a new acquaintance of 
later days — a young lady — " but if you do, my mother is 
having some on Monday." " Why, my dear," he answered, 
perhaps half believing what he said, " I care for nothing 
else." 1 

As his manner was absolutely devoid of affectation, so he 
was never unduly elevated by his own achievements. When 
success came to him, with admiration not always judicious in 
its train, it did not turn his head. " Invariably," writes 
Domett, ** without a single exception to the contrary that I 
have ever heard or seen, he expressed the same modest 
estimate of himself and his doings — though he cannot but be 
aware of his own superiority." The corollary of this attitude 
was a generous appreciation of the work of other poets. He 
never wavered in his assertion of Tennyson's supremacy. 
Mr. Carr, who remarked his "constant expression of loyal 
admiration of the genius of Tennyson," adds, " I have heard 
him bear witness to it again and again, and always with 
entire sincerity." ^ Mr. Marcus Huish once witnessed a 
meeting between the two poets, when the younger man 
advanced to greet the elder, bent low, and addressed him 
as " Magister meus."^ And he was ready with appreciation 
elsewhere. When William Morris's Defence of Giieyievere 
appeared in 1857, Browning wrote enthusiastically of it to 
Mr. W. M. Rossetti : " I shall hardly be able to tell Morris 

" I do not say," adds Mr. Rossetti, " that this statement of Browning's was a 
perfectly reasonable one ; but certain it is that he made it to me, and this in a 
tone of entire conviction." Some Reminiscences^ y>. 189. 

' AthenccHfn article, ut supra. 

* Some Eminent l^ictorians, p. 204. 

' Happy England, p. 44. 



288 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

what I think and rethink of his admirable poems, the only 
new poems, to my mind, since there's no telling when." ^ His 
recognition of Mr. Edmund Gosse's poetic faculty was, in his 
own words, "from the first complete and immediate."^ And 
he was always eager to encourage new practitioners, where he 
could discern promise. Verses by E. D. W. (Miss West, 
afterwards Mrs. Edward Dowden), printed for private circula- 
tion in 1879, had his warm commendation ; and among the 
last of his letters which have been preserved is one addressed 
to a lady who had submitted to him her verses in manuscript, 
in which he assures her, in words borrowed from one of her 
own poems, that " There is room in the blue for a new 
song-bird." ^ 

Of the width and variety of his reading much has been 
already said. Mr. Gosse speaks of him as " steeping him- 
self" — particularly between the years 1837 and 1840 — "in 
all literature, modern and ancient, English and exotic." 
Rabbinical lore was particularly congenial to him. During 
this period he made some study of Hebrew, though after- 
wards, as he wrote to Miss Barrett in 1845, he "let it slip." 
Among the Greek poets Homer and Euripides were his 
favourites, and often his travelling companions. He was 
probably a wide rather than an exact scholar, nevertheless 
his version of the Agameninoji shows that he could be exact 
when he chose. He liked the later Latin writers, such as 
Claudian and Apuleius. He was certainly familiar with 
philosophic theorj'- ; but it is questionable whether he ever 
had the patience to study systematically the writings of a 
Hegel or a Herbert Spencer. 

In financial matters he was exact to a nicety. As a 
young man he had neither desired nor had control of much 
money ; and during most of his married life he was obliged 
to be extremely careful. His wife records that it was pain 
and grief to him to be in debt even to the amount of five 
shillings. When he undertook to be steward of the ;^200 a 
year allowed to Landor by his brothers he insisted, though 
they deprecated this, in rendering an account of every penny 

' Rtiskin, RossetH, Preraphaditism : Papers^ 1854-1S62, p. 119. 
- Wise, nt supra. Second Series, vol. ii. p. 6. 
' Wise, jit supm, Saorid Series, vol. i. p. 94. 



AN OLD-FASHIONED LIBERAL 289 

of it. This extreme carefulness became a fixed habit, and 
pervaded his own expenditure after it had ceased to be 
necessary. He habitually rode in omnibuses and practised 
various small economies. But he knew how to be generous ; 
witness his liberality to the beleagured Parisians ; and that 
he was not set on the acquisition of money there is 
interesting proof available. He could not bring himself to 
write for periodicals. " If I publish a book, and people 
choose to buy it, that proves they want to read my work. 
But to have them turn over the pages of a magazine and 
find me — that is to be an uninvited guest. My wife liked 
it. She liked to be with the others ; but I have stead- 
fastly refused that kind of thing from first to last." So 
he wrote, about 1886, to the editor of a Boston magazine, 
who had offered him ;^400 for a short poem. And he had 
declined even handsomer offers from an English one. The 
English editor named a large price, which was declined, and 
then a still larger, which was again refused ; finally, sent a 
blank cheque for the poet to fill out to his own satisfaction, 
which he forthwith returned. This is hardly a course which 
one actuated by the love of money would pursue. '^ 

An equal consistency characterized his political opinions. 
He developed, but he did not change. He began as a liberal 
and ended as a liberal unionist. But his liberalism was of a 
sort which appears to be on the road to extinction. He 
would no more have sympathized with the socialism which 
latterly masquerades as liberalism than would Mr. Gladstone 
himself. What he instinctively demanded, as his sonnet W/iy 
I am a Liberal shows, was liberty for the individual to achieve 
his own destiny, hampered by no more restrictions than are 
necessary to be imposed for the maintenance of a similar 
liberty for other individuals. He was suspicious of State 
interference. The present Master of Balliol, who as an 

' Wise, ut supra. Second Series, vol. ii. p. 25. A proposition emanating from 
another American magazine, that he should submit poems for approval, had been 
already rejected with contumely. In the course of his reply he wrote — 

"The air one breathes with Smith may be the sharper ; 
But — save me from Scirocco's heat in Harper'." 

His reasons for making an exception in the case of Herve Kiel have already been 
e xplained. 
U 



290 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

undergraduate met Browning at dinner at Jowett's on his 
first visit to Oxford, remembers that he expressed much 
approval of the English method of leaving hospitals and 
other works of public beneficence to the energy of individuals 
rather than to State control. Browning would have heartily 
sympathized with the complaint of Tennyson, written more 
than twenty years before this meeting, that 

" The individual withers, and the world is more and more." 

Holding, as he did, that nothing in life was so interesting or 
important as the history of an individual soul, he could not 
approve of any political system which tended to retard its 
development ; and he was convinced that socialism would 
have this effect. And he was no mere theorist. His under- 
graduate fellow-guest in Jowett's rooms, who was surprised 
by the absence of poetry from the conversation, remembers 
that he talked like a man of the world and a student of 
affairs. His extraordinary knowledge of all that related to 
the Times newspaper was also subject of remark at Balliol, 
and his great admiration for Delane, its editor in the sixties. 
He approved also, in a rather different fashion, of the Pall 
Mall Gazette in the first stage of its career, calling it " the 
perfection of a paper for people who wanted to know what 
was going on in the world, as a man might learn it at a club 
or over a dinner-table." ^ As the sonnet above mentioned 
may be taken as Browning's profession of political faith, and 
as it is not included in any edition of his works, it is here 
appended. 

Why I am a Liberal. 

" ' Why ? ' Because all I haply can and do, 
All that I am now, all I hope to be, — 
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free 

Body and soul the purpose to pursue 

God traced for both ? If fetters not a few 
Of prejudice, convention fall from me 
These shall I bid men — each in his degree 

Also God-guided — bear, and gladly too ? 

But little do or can the best of us : 
That little is achieved through Liberty. 

* My Life in Two Hemispheres, by Gavan Duffy, vol. ii. pp. 3SS-6. 



VOLCANIC OUTBURSTS 291 

Who then dares hold — emancipated thus — 
His fellow shall continue bound ? Not I 

Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss 

A brother's right to freedom. That is ' Why.' " 1 

Thus far we seem to have been contemplating the 
demeanour and disposition of an admirable but in many 
respects not very unusual type ; a man kindly, benevolent, 
cultured, and precise ; but Browning was a great deal more 
than this. Vesuvius with a light wreath of vapour curling 
from its summit is by no means the same as Vesuvius in 
eruption. It was not for nothing that Browning was born 
" supremely passionate." The fairest fruit of this attribute 
was his intense devotion to the poet-soul that was united 
with his own. But other outcomes of it were manifested in 
his life from time to time. He was subject to violent 
explosions of wrath, for which there was not invariably 
adequate justification. But who would desire to eliminate 
wrath from the world .' There is a just anger which clears 
the atmosphere, a moral indignation which is a sweetener of 
society ; but it is too much to expect a flawless discretion 
from those capable of this passion. 

Browning in his younger days was the guest at dinner of 
a man who had Oriental ideas about the subjection of women. 
This person in the course of the meal reduced his wife to 
tears and dismissed her from the room. The attitude of the 
remaining guests, save one, was complaisant. The host 
followed his wife, and the pair were discovered in the drawing- 
room, she all meekness, he all magnanimity. Browning stood 
by and waited his opportunity. It soon came. 

" I listened arrectis auribus, and in a minute he said he did not 
know somebody I mentioned. I told him, that I easily conceived — 
such a person would never condescend to know him^ etc., and treated 
him to every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text — and 
at the end marched out of the room ; and the valorous man, who had 
sate like a post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and 
only said in unfeigned wonder, ' What ca7i have possessed you, my 
dear Browning ? ' " - 

» Written in 1885. 

' Letters of Robert Brmvning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, vol. i. p. 413. 



292 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

For the consequences of another of the explosions only 
regret can be felt, whatever be thought of the dispute, inas- 
much as it resulted in the dissolution of an ancient friendship. 
Browning owed a great deal to John Forster, as he himself 
willingly and explicitly acknowledged.^ Forster was a man 
of genuine kindness, and helpful to his friends to an uncommon 
degree ; but he was heavy-handed and dictatorial, and apt to 
assume the proprietary airs of the showman towards those 
whom he had " discovered." On Browning's return to 
England the intimacy between the two men was renewed ; 
it became the custom for Browning to lunch with Forster on 
most Sundays. But he grew restive under Forster's patroniz- 
ing airs. At a dinner-party at the Benzons' the two men 
began, in the words of an eye-witness, "to nag at one 
another." On Browning citing, in support of some story 
he had told, the authority of a lady of his acquaintance, 
Forster expressed a doubt of her veracity. Browning, in a 
sudden rage, seized a decanter and threatened to throw it at 
his head if he said another word. Before his opponent could 
recover from his astonishment, friends intervened, and the 
situation was saved ; but neither on that evening nor sub- 
sequently was a reconciliation effected.^ 

There remains yet another episode, to ignore which, 
painful as it is, would be misleading. In the last year of 
Browning's life appeared the Letters of Edward FitzGerald. 
By an editorial oversight, for which deep regret was after- 
wards expressed, the following passage was allowed to appear 
in print : — 

" Mrs. Browning's death is rather a relief to me, I must say : no 
more Aurora Leighs, thank God ! A woman of real genius, I know ; 
but what is the upshot of it all ? She and her sex had better mind 
the kitchen and the children," etc., etc. 

Opening the volume at his club, and unhappily at this 
very passage, Browning was overcome with indignation. He 
wrote in hot haste a savage denunciatory sonnet, and sent it 

' See the dedication to Forster of the third edition of his works, 1863. 

- The story of this episode is narrated at length in Mr. R. C. Lehmann's 
Memories of Half a Century, chap. 8. See also yohn Forster : by one of his 
Friends, p. 38. "In those days," writes Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, "there were 
tempestuous spirits abroad. Forster could be violent enough." 



DEVOTION TO HIS WIFE'S MEMORY 293 

to the AthcncBum. A little later he would have withdrawn 
it, but this proved impossible. His own subsequent comment 
on the matter is contained in a letter to a friend, which he 
wrote a few days afterwards. 

" As to my own utterance after receiving unexpectedly an out- 
rage, why, like all impulsive actions, once the impulse over, I believe 
I might preferably have left the thing to its proper contempt. But 
there was something too shocking in a man, whom my wife never 
even heard of, ' feeling relieved at her death, he must say ' — and I 
too said what I must. The people who tell you * his opinion was 
really on the woman question' talk nonsense. He might have 
uttered any amount of impertinence about women's work in general, 
and that of my wife in particular, without getting a word out of me — 
but, * to be relieved at the death which would stop the work, thank 
God'! 

" How editor and publisher could let this passage remain in the 
letter which a pen-scratch would have left unobjectionable, passes 
my power of understanding." ^ 

It is superfluous to dilate upon this unhappy affair, 
which serves, however, to emphasize the poet's passionate 
devotion to the memory of his wife. The depth of this 
devotion was well known to his intimates, to whom he often 
spoke of her. She was his muse, his source of inspiration, as 
his readers know. He loved to show his friends her Hebrew 
Bible, profusely annotated in her own minute handwriting. 
" See what a scholar she was ! " he would say. 

"I had happened to remark," writes Domett, who had never 
seen her, " as I looked at her portrait, ' she looks all intellect.' 
' Ah, she was more than that', he said, musingly and with feeling. 
I should rather have said (what I suppose I meant) all spirit or 
soul." 

" He shewed me," says the diarist in another place, " her Hebrew 
Bible with Greek notes in her handwriting in the margins, and said 
Jowett and Blomfield (late Bishop of London) had both expressed 
surprise at the learning they evinced. Also several other relics and 
mementos of her, particularly the little reddish-leathered Pembroke 
table at which she wrote her poems. He always mentions her, 
though with few words and in a low tone, with the deepest admiration 
and regard ; and if possible more often for her beauty of character 

' Wii,L', lit supra, vol. i. p. 97. 



294 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

than brightness of intellect. Miss Browning, too, was strong in 
praise of her total freedom from assumption, or the slightest 
apparent consciousness of being a ' genius.' I suppose they know 
the world has abundant proofs of the qualities of her head, so 
insist more on what they have more exclusive knowledge of, those 
of her heart." 

To such as had but a superficial sight of the poet who 
"went everywhere," who enjoyed the comforts and luxuries of 
life, who was often the centre of a group of admiring ladies, 
his devotion to this sacred memory was naturally not apparent. 
There was nothing new, however, in the feminine adulation 
which attended him. His own wife had written, " The 
women adore him everywhere far too much for decency."* 
But he did not take the proffered incense seriously ; though 
it is possible that his expansive manner was occasionally 
misconstrued. He might very certainly have married again, 
had he chosen to do so. But "the memory of what had been" 
remaining with him, though unperceived by the world, was 
probably the most potent factor of his life, and kept him as 
he was. 

It is always a delicate matter to speak of a man's 
religious beliefs ; but to ignore them in the case of one in 
whose poetry they play so prominent a part is impossible. 
Except for the brief period of his "growing pains" Browning 
was through life an ardent and consistent theist. There is 
no need to labour this point, so far as his poems are concerned, 
for it is apparent to every reader of them. It is also manifest 
in his correspondence. " The rest is with God — whose finger 
I see every minute of my life." " I am not without fear of 
some things in this world — but ' the wrath of men,' all the 
men living put together, I fear as I fear the fly I have just 
put out of the window ; but I fear God — and am ready, He 
knows, to die this moment in taking His part against 
any piece of injustice or oppression, so I aspire to die ! " 
These passages are taken from his letters to his future 
wife.2 His intense conviction of the immortality of the soul, 
a doctrine on which he so constantly insists, is not less 
familiar to his readers. "As to immortality," Professor 

' Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Brcnjuning, vol. ii. p. 434 [to Miss Browning]. 
''■ Vol. i. p, 133; vol. ii. p. 229. 



ATTITUDE TO DARWINISM 295 

Knight reports him saying, "I don't need arguments, I know it 
by intuition, which is superior to proof." ^ These are postulates 
in whose acceptance, be it observed, there is nothing un- 
philosophical, unless we are to say that Kant (for example) 
was no philosopher ; yet, presumably because he held them, 
it got abroad that Browning was " strongly against Darwin, 
rejecting the truths of science and regretting its advance." 
These imputations he was at some pains — for letter-writing 
had become very distasteful to him — to refute at length. 

" It came, I suppose," he writes (ii October, 1881), ^'of Hohen- 
stiel-Schwangau's expressing the notion which was the popular one at 
the appearance of Darwin's book — and you might as well charge 
Shakespeare with holding that there were men whose heads grew 
beneath their shoulders, because Othello told Desdemona that he had 
seen such. In reality, all that seems proved in Darwin's scheme was a 
conception familiar to me from the beginning : see in Paracelsus the 
progressive development from senseless matter to organized, until 
man's appearance (Part V). Also in Cleon, see the order of ' life's 
mechanics ' — and I daresay in many passages of my poetry : for how 
can one look at Nature as a whole and doubt that, whenever there is 
a gap, a ' link ' must be ' missing ' — through the limited power and 
opportunity of the looker ? But go back and back, as you please, at 
the back, as Mr. Sludge is made to insist, you find {my faith is as 
constant) creative intelligence, acting as matter but not resulting from 
it. Once set the balls rolling, and ball may hit ball and send any 
number in any direction over the table ; but I believe in the cue 
pushed by a hand. When one is taunted (as I notice is often fancied 
an easy method with the un-Darwinized) — taunted with thinking 
successive acts of creation credible, metaphysics have been stopped 
short at, however physics may fare : time and space being purely con- 
ceptions of our own, wholly inapplicable to intelligence of another kind 
— with whom, as I made Luria say, there is an everlasting moment 
of creation, if one at all — past, present, and future, one and the same 
state. This consideration does not effect Darwinism proper to any 
degree. But I do not consider his case as to the changes in organi- 
zation, brought about by desire and will in the creature, proved." '^ 

A further consideration arises. Holding firmly two 
doctrines which Christianity enjoins, does Browning accept 

' Renmtiscences^ 1904. 

- Wise, ut supra, vol. i. p. 82-84. Cf. the sermon on evolution in Francis 
Fiirini {1%%"]). 



296 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the other tenets of that faith ? He is unquestionably a 
religious teacher, but is he also a Christian teacher ? It 
would perhaps have been unnecessary to raise this 
question, had he not been explicitly reported, by Robert 
Buchanan, to have affirmed the contrary, " I well remember," 
writes that author in the " Letter Dedicatory " to his Outcast, 

*' the amazement and concern of the late Mr. Browning when I 
informed him on one occasion that he was an advocate of Christian 
theology, nay, an essentially Christian teacher and preacher. In the 
very face of his masterly books, which certainly support the opinion 
then advanced, I hereby affirm and attest that the writer regarded 
that expression of opinion as an impeachment and a slight. I there- 
fore put the question categorically, ' Are you not, then, a Christian ? ' 
He immediately thundered, ' No.' " 

It is to be regretted that this statement was not made in 
Browning's lifetime, that he might have dealt with it himself. 
Domett, it will be remembered, records an exactly opposite 
assertion. How are these conflicting utterances to be dealt 
with ? If there were nothing else to go upon, it would be 
necessary to put Domett's authority in one scale and 
Buchanan's in the other ; but there is, of course, a very great 
deal. The more the data are examined, the more astonishing 
does Buchanan's story appear. These must now be briefly 
reviewed. Browning was brought up a Christian ; his 
earliest poem contains a passionate address to Christ ; he 
nowhere makes an attack on Christianity; Christmas Eve and 
Easter Day is in its general drift a defence of the reformed 
faith ; in the introduction to the Shelley letters he describes 
Christ as " a Divine Being ; " the gospel narrative fascinates 
him as a subject for verse ; he returns to it again and again. 
Then, take his practice as to religious observances. In London, 
with one exception already mentioned, he was not a church- 
goer, but he was when visiting the universities ; in Normandy 
he attended a French reformed service with Milsand, during 
his Llangollen visit he never missed Sunday afternoon church, 
and in Venice he often went to a chapel of the Waldenseans. 
But something much more convincing remains. In 1876 he 
received a letter from a lady who, believing herself to be dying, 
wrote to thank him for the help she had derived from his 



A LETTER ABOUT CHRISTIANITY 297 

poems, mentioning particularly Rabbi Ben Ezra and Abt 
Vogler. He replied as follows : — 

" It would ill become me to waste a word on my own feelings 
except inasmuch as they can be common to us both, in such a situa- 
tion as you describe yours to be, and which, by sympathy, I can 
make mine by the anticipation of a few years at most. It is a great 
thing, the greatest, that a human being should have passed the pro- 
bation of life, and sum up its experience in a witness to the power 
and love of God. I dare congratulate you. All the help I can offer, 
in my poor degree, is the assurance that I see ever 7nore reason to 
hold by the same hope — and that by no means in ignorance of what 
has been advanced to the contrary ; and for your sake I could wish 
it to be true that I had so much of * genius ' as to permit the testi- 
mony of an especially privileged insight to come in aid of the ordinary 
argument. For I know I, myself, have been aware of the communica- 
tion of something more subtle than a ratiocinative process, when the 
convictions of ' genius ' have thrilled my soul to its depths, as when 
Napoleon, shutting up the New Testament, said of Christ : ' Do you 
know that I am an understander of men ? Well, He was no man ! ' 
Or when Charles Lamb, in a gay fancy with some friends as to how 
he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear 
suddenly in flesh and blood once more, on the final suggestion, 
' And if Christ entered this room ? ' changed his manner at once, 
and stuttered out, as his manner was when moved, ' You see, if 
Shakespeare entered, we should all rise; if He appeared we must 
kneel.' Or, not to multiply instances, as when Dante wrote what I 
will transcribe from my wife's Testament wherein I recorded it four- 
teen years ago, ' Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain 
it is, that from this life I shall pass to another, there, where that lady 
lives of whom my soul was enamoured.' ^ Dear friend, I may have 
wearied you in spite of your good will. God bless you, sustain, and 
receive you ! " ^ 

In the face of the available evidence, that thunderous 
" No " becomes more perplexing than ever. But there is this 

> That • the solemn Tuscan's ' phrase haunted him La Saisiaz shows — 

" Is it fact to which I cleave, 
Is it fancy I but cherish, when I take upon my lips 
Phrase the solemn Tuscan fashioned, and declare the soul's eclipse, 
Not the soul's extinction ? take his ' I believe and I declare— 
Certain am I — from this life I pass into a better, there 
Where that lady lives of whom enamoured was my soul.' " 
- Browning Society Papers, vol. i. Mr. Kingsland also prints the letter in 
his Robert Brownings Chief Poet of the Age. 



298 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

to be said. Browning was eclectic in his beliefs ; and the 
doctrine which makes a system of rewards and punishments 
the sole motive to right living was no part of his creed. The 
idea of vindictive punishment in another world is repeatedly 
attacked in his poems: in The Inn Album, in Ixion, and in 
A Camel Driver {Ferishtah's Fancies). Now, if Buchanan 
chose to put this doctrine in the forefront of Christianity, 
and as an essential part of it, Browning very probably lost his 
temper and asserted that if tliaf were Christianity, he was no 
Christian. Otherwise, there seems no alternative but to 
regard the anecdote as apocryphal.* 

In any case, when a poet deals with religion, it is 
unreasonable to expect exact definitions and precise state- 
ments. It is not his business to provide them. But by 
suggestion and insight he may cast a light upon dark places, 
and he may write verses instinct with Christian feeling though 
without a word of dogma in them. It is well to remember 
this in reading, for instance, such a poem as La Saisiaz. The 
main constituents of theology, as Browning saw it, were 
Power and Love ; and it would be rash to deny that their 
union is perceptible in any worthy conception of Christianity. 
He never pretended to have solved in its entirety "the riddle 
of the painful earth." 

" I do not ask," ho wrote in the last year of his life, *' a full 
disclosure of Truth, which would be a concession contrary to the 
law of things, which applies equally to the body and the soul, that 
it is only by striving to attain strength (in the one case) and truth 
(in the other) that body and soul do so — the effort (common to both) 
being productive, in each instance, of the necessary initiation into all 
the satisfactions which result from partial success : absolute success 
being only attainable for the body in full manhood — for the soul, in 
its full apprehension of Truth — which will be, not here^ at all events." 

Life, in Browning's view, was a period of probation > 
throughout which it was man's happiness and duty to 

" Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing 

That's spirit ; though cloistered fast soar free." 

' An obiter dictum from Browning's Shelley preface is worth quoting in this 
connexion. " In religion one earnest and unextorted assertion of belief should 
outweigh, as a matter of testimony, many assertions of unl)elief." 

■ Wise, /// su/>ra, vol. ii. p. 90. 



APPEARANCE AND HEALTH 



299 



The unconquerable spiritual optimism which dominates his 
poetry was also his most salient characteristic as a man. 

The pictures of the poet by Lehmann and Watts which 
hang in the National Portrait Gallery, to say nothing of 
the art of the camera, render an impression of his appearance 
in his later days accessible to all. The portrait of him as a 
young man published in the Spirit of the Age was pronounced 
by Domett " a very poor representation indeed." 

" Browning," says this authority, " in young days and in middle 
life (according to Gordigiani's portrait) was decidedly goodAooVvag^ 
as well as intellectual-looking. His full face when young — with 
pale, very clear complexion, long flowing fine black hair, and bright 
grey eyes — when animated or excited by conversation or otherwise 
was indeed very handsome." 

He and his sister both inherited their mother's pale com- 
plexion, but there was nothing in their features to suggest 
the admixture of Semitic or alien blood. Their grandmother, 
Margaret Tittle, was a Creole only in the sense that she was 
born in the West Indies.^ 

Except that in his early manhood he was subject to severe 
neuralgia, he was throughout life remarkably free from ill- 
ness. " He says," wrote Domett, "that he was much subject 
to headaches when young, but now never has one, nor has 
had for years, and would think himself ill indeed if he had." 
" He was," his son writes, " the healthiest man I ever knew." 
In his old age he was the picture of health and strength, 
with none of the signs of delicacy which Domett noticed in 
the time of their earlier acquaintance. His appearance was 
robust, manly and impressive ; his abundant white hair, 
expressive glance and alert demeanour made him a noticeable 
figure in any assemblage ; but there was nothing in his look 
which distinctly proclaimed the poet. 

It is no part of the intention of the present work to add to 
that already considerable mass of writing devoted to the 
detailed criticism and exposition of Browning's poetry ; but 
a brief attempt to estimate his poetic stature and his place 
in literature will not be superfluous. There was a time when 

' This is the proper connotation of the word Creole, often mistakenly supposed 
to imply an admixture of black blood. 



300 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

to charge him with obscurity was regarded as the mark of 
a Phih'stine. But had enthusiasts considered the matter 
historically, they would have found that the Philistines were 
reinforced by some highly reputable names. Landor's recog- 
nition of a brother-poet has been recorded, but this is how 
he writes with reference to Sordello. " I only wish he would 
atticize a little. Few of the Athenians had such a quarry on 
their property, but they constructed better roads for the con- 
veyance of the material." Tennyson and Miss Martineau 
were repelled by the complexities of this poem. Domett was 
not blinded by friendship to its harshness. Arnould, who 
returned so constantly to Paracelsus, wrote as late as 1847, 
" I would to God he would purge his style of obscurities." 

Another well-wisher and admirer, Leighton, went so far 
as to accuse him of, at times, "writing wilfully in cypher." 
This charge is absolutely groundless ; but, admitting the 
unduly condensed style of Sordello, a fault which though 
exorcized for a time recurs at intervals, and re-asserts itself 
unpleasantly in certain of the longer philosophic monologues, 
to what cause or causes may it be attributed ? It had its 
origin to some extent in the supposed needs of the drama, 
and had already permeated Strafford. It was a reaction 
from the verbosity of the school of Sheridan Knowles, with 
reference to which a critic inquired, " Which of our smartest 
dramatic poets nowadays can ask, ' How d'ye do ? ' in less than 
three verses ? " — a reaction so extreme that the Edinburgh 
Review in an article on Strafford went so far as to compare 
the manner of its dialogue to the staccato speech of Mr. 
Alfred Jingle. This warning, however, was unheeded, as 
Sordello shows. For there was another cause at work. 
Browning was a very rapid thinker. " He never thinks but 
at full speed ; and the rate of his thought is to that of another 
man's as the speed of a railway to that of a waggon, or the 
speed of a telegraph to that of a railway." Such was 
Swinburne's judgment. Browning's gift of expression, great 
as it was, could not always keep up with the rapid flow of his 
ideas. Language, as a medium, was apt to baulk him, as 
soon as he put pen to paper ; a phenomenon noticeable, also, 
in his letters. He wrote, in general, very fast indeed, and 
shrank from the labour of revision ; not because it was 



ACCESSIBLE TO CRITICISM 301 

arduous, but because he found it distasteful. That con- 
temporary readers found Sordello so difficult certainly came 
upon him as a painful surprise, though, as he said, he " wrote 
it for only a few " ; but he had too much good sense to shut 
his eyes to the moral deducible from the manner of its 
reception. After discussing with his friend, some thirty 
years later, the meaning of a passage in A Toccata of 
Galuppi's, Domett made the following entry in his diary : — 

** Browning, I saw, had not lost the good-humoured patience with 
which he could listen to friendly criticism on any of his works. 
I have proof of this in a copy of the original edition of Sordello^ 
which he sent me when it appeared. The poem is undoubtedly 
somewhat obscure, though, curiously enough, much more so in the 
mere objective (so to speak) incidents of the story than in its sub- 
jective phases, that is in the narrative of the hero's varying moods of 
mind or the philosophical reflections of the poet. Accordingly I 
had scribbled in pencil on the book two or three impatient remarks, 
such as * Who says this ? ' ' What does this mean ? ' etc. Some time 
after he asked me to let him see my copy, which I lent him. He 
returned it with two or three pencil notes of his own, answering my 
questions. But I was amused many years afterwards, in New 
Zealand (in 1863), on the appearance of a second edition of Sordello^ 
to find he had altered, I think, all the passages I had hinted objection 
to, or questioned the meaning of." 

This poem, which its author designed, as the 1863 dedica- 
tion tells us, to turn into something which the many might 
like, but which he eventually decided to leave as he found it, 
remained, nevertheless, something of a sore subject. "Ah ! " 
he said, with a grimace, on seeing a copy of it on a friend's 
table ; " the entirely unintelligible Sordello ! " But, in general, 
he did not in the least mind the monitions of intimate friends, 
such as Domett or Tennyson, on the obscurity or length of 
his poems. His answer was invariably the same : " I did my 
best." It is, however, noteworthy that, at any rate from the 
publication of Men and Women onwards, his finest work is 
contained in those volumes whose contents were not written 
at high pressure and top speed. 

Something of his own attitude towards his poetry is to be 
gathered from an interesting letter which he wrote, in 1868 



302 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

to Mr. W, G. Kingsland, afterwards the author of Robert 
Browning, Chief Poet of the Age. 

" Intelligence, by itself, is scarcely the thing with respect to a 
new book — as Wordsworth says (a little altered) ' You must like it 
before it be worthy of your liking.' In spite of your intelligence and 
sympathy, I can have but little doubt but that my writing has been, 
in the main, too hard for many I should have been pleased to com- 
municate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as 
some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pre- 
tended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar, 
or a game of dominoes, to an idle man. So perhaps, on the whole, 
I get my deserts and something over — not a crowd, but a few I 
value more." ^ 

He is, in short, no "idle singer of an empty day." His 
is no garden of Proserpine where men may fold their hands 
and be lulled to an indifferent calm by soulless melodies. 
He is strenuous, virile, restless, even combative. But no one 
who approaches his work with those two qualifications — 
intelligence and sympathy — need go empty away. 

To make a bogey of his obscurity would be as foolish as 
it is to ignore it. After Sordello he did " atticize " ; not a 
little, merely, but a great deal. In what may be called his 
best period — from Pippa Passes to Balaustion's Adventure — 
there is little in the way of difficulty with which intelligence 
and sympathy need fear to cope. The high level at which he 
kept his productions during those thirty years is certainly one 
of the most notable achievements of English poetry. The 
wide circle of interests over which his genius played gives 
cause for admiration ; and not less remarkable is the instinct 
which guided him to invest each interest with its appropriate 
poetic garb. So extensive is his range that it is difficult to 
believe that the same man wrote, for xnsXdjwo.t, Love Anions: 
the Ruins and Shop. Yet see how admirably the metre and 
phraseology of each poem are suited to the effect they are 
intended to produce. In the first are noble words and 
harmonies, creating in succession the atmosphere of departed 
greatness and of triumphant love. In the second are such 
expressions as " City Chaps " and " Hampstead Villa's kind 

' Wise, tit supra., vol. i. p. 25. 



A GREAT CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE 303 

defence " — calculated, it might be thought, to frighten away 
the shy muse. But read Shop from beginning to end, and 
you find that all its queer phrases are a part of the picture ; 
and that the concluding stanza, with its impassioned cry, 
victoriously lifts the whole piece from the realm of doggerel 
(to which it seemed perilously near) to the domain of poetry. 
Or, contrast the rapid measure and torrential flow of words in 
Waring — making us, as it were, participants of the speaker's 
aching self-reproach and noble longing — with the designedly 
mean structure of Confessiofts, fit vehicle for its unhappy, 
squalid story. Above all, how magnificently Browning's 
blank verse at its best — as in the finest parts of The Ring 
and tJie Book — subserves the display of passions which at 
once lacerate and purify the human heart. Browning is 
supreme in his mastery of metre ; and if language occasion- 
ally got the upper hand of him, he amply avenged himself, 
a hundred times over, in his best period. For then language 
was his servant — the servant of a great creative intelligence. 

Of course he did not always maintain so high a level ; 
he fell, in later days, into metaphysical quagmires, whither 
already, it is probable, few care to follow him. He was not 
a good judge of his own work, and appeared to lose, at times, 
his sense of beauty. His very facility of rhyming, in which 
he took great delight, sometimes proved a pitfall, as (to take 
the very worst example) in Pietro of Abano. But his best work 
has undoubtedly won him a place in the van of English poetry. 
Such poems as Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau and Red Cotton 
Night-Cap Country will in future ages probably attract the 
attention of none but those whom Hazlitt called "eaters of 
olives and readers of black letter." But the great gallery of 
Men and Women — extended so as to include the protagonists 
of The Ring and the Book, and many another figure from 
Bells and Pomegranates, Dramatis Personce, and elsewhere — 
will continue to echo with a host of footfalls, so long as the 
love of poetry endures. 



APPENDIX A 

Shorter poems by Robert Browning not included 

IN ANY edition OF HIS WORKS 

A FOREST THOUGHT 

IN far Esthonian solitudes 
The parent-firs of future woods 
Gracefully, airily spire at first 
Up to the sky, by the soft sand nurst ; 
Self-sufficient are they, and strong 
With outspread arms, broad level and long ; 
But soon in the sunshine and the storm 
They darken, changing fast their form — ■ 
Low boughs fall off, and in the bole 
Each tree spends all its strenuous soul — 
Till the builder gazes wistfully 
Such noble ship-mast wood to see, 
And cares not for its soberer hue, 
Its rougher bark and leaves more few. 

But just when beauty passes away 
And you half regret it could not stay. 
For all their sap and vigourous life, — 
Under the shade, secured from strife 
A seedling springs — the forest-tree 
In miniature, and again we see 
The delicate leaves that will fade one day 
The fan-like shoots that will drop away. 
The taper stem a breath could strain — 
Which shall foil one day the hurricane : 
We turn from this infant of the copse 
To the parent-firs, — in their waving tops 
To find some trace of the light green tuft 
A breath could stir, — in the bole aloft 



3o6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Column-like set against the sky, 
The spire that flourished airily 
And the marten bent as she rustled by. 
So shall it be, dear Friends, when days 
Pass, and in this fair child we trace 
Goodness, full-formed in you, tho' dim 
Faint-budding, just astir in him : 
When rudiments of generous worth 
And frankest love in him have birth, 
We'll turn to love and worth full-grown, 
And learn their fortune from your own. 
Nor shall we vainly search to see 
His gentleness — simplicity — 
Not lost in your maturer grace — 
Perfected, but not changing place. 

May this grove be a charmed retreat . . . 

May northern winds and savage sleet 

Leave the good trees untouched, unshorn 

A crowning pride of woods unborn : 

And gracefully beneath their shield 

May the seedling grow ! All pleasures yield 

Peace below and peace above, 

The glancing squirrels' summer love, 

And the brood-song of the cushat-dove ! 

These lines were addressed to friends on the occasion of the christening of 
their eldest son, to whom the poet stood godfather. On returning to the house 
after the christening, Browning went into a room by himself and there wrote tlie 
poem and h:inded it to the parents. The deilication runs : " Written and 
inscribed to W. A. and A. D. by their Sincere Friend, Robert Krowning, 
13, Nelson Sq., November 4, 1837." 



SONNET 

Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, couid'si ihou know !) 
May turn away thick witli fast-gathering tears : 

I glance not where all gaze : thrilling and low 
Their passionate praises reach tliee — my cheek wears 

Alone no wotider when thou passest by ; 

Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply 

To the irrepressible homage which doth glow 
On every lip but mine : if in thine ears 



BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM 307 

Their accents linger — and thou dost recall 

Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale, 
Beside each votarist whose lighted brow 
Wore worship like an aureole, " O'er them all 

My beauty," thou wilt murmur, " did prevail 
Save that one only : " — Lady, could'st thou know ! 

Printed in the Monthly Repository , 1834, New Series, vol. viii. p. 712. It is 
(chronologically) possible that this sonnet was addressed to Eliza Flower. 



BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM 
I 

" Would a man 'scape the rod ? " 
Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, 

" See that he turn to God 
The day before his death." 

" Ay, could a man inquire 
When it shall come I " I say. 

The Rabbi's eye shoots fire — 
" Then let him turn to-day ! " 



II 

Quoth a young Sadducee : 

" Reader of many rolls, 
Is it so certain we 

Have, as they tell us, souls ? " 

" Son, there is no reply ! " 
The Rabbi bit his beard ; 

" Certain, a soul have / — 

We may have none," he sneer'd. 



Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, 
The Right-hand Temple-column, 

Taught babes in grace their grammar, 
And struck the simple, solemn. 

Dated Rome, April 27, 1854, printed in the Keepsake^ 1856. 



3o8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 
HELEN'S TOWER 

( Written at the request of the Marquis of Duffenn) 

Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream perchance 
How the Greek beauty from the Scaean gate 
Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, 

Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. 

Hearts would leap otherwise at thy advance, 
Lady, to whom this tower is consecrate ! 
Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate, 

Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance. 

The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange : 
A transitory shame of long ago. 
It dies into the sand from which it sprang ; 

But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shalt fear no change ; 
God's self laid stable earth's foundations so. 
When all the morning stars together sang. 
Dated April 26, 1870. 

VERSES FROM THE HOUR WILL COME 

The blind man to the maiden said, 

** O thou of hearts the truest, 
Thy countenance is hid from me ; 
Let not my question anger thee ! 

Speak, though in words the fewest. 

" Tell me, what kind of eyes are thine ? 

Dark eyes, or light ones rather ? " 
•' My eyes are a decided brown — 
So much at least, by looking down. 

From the brook's glass I gather." 

" And is it red — thy little mouth ? 

That too the blind must care for." 
" Ah ! I would tell it soon to thee, 

Only — none yet has told it me, 
I cannot answer, therefore. 

'* But dost thou ask what heart I have — 

There hesitate I never. 
In thine own breast 'tis borne, and so 
'Tis thine in weal, and thine in woe. 
For life, for death — thine ever ! " 
1883. 



APPENDIX B 



THE MURDER OF POMPILIA 

(Reprinted from the Monthly Review, Nov., 1900, with Mr. John 
Murray's sanction) 

For the discovery, last January, of the Italian manuscript, of which 
the following is a translation, I am indebted to Signer Dottore Ignazio 
Giorgi, Librarian of the Royal Casanatense Library in Rome. The 
volume from which it is taken [Misc. MS. 2037] is entitled " Varii siiccessi 
curiosi e degni di esser considerati" and also contains an account of the 
trial of Beatrice Cenci, and of the recantation, in 1686, of Miguel de 
Molinos, whose followers are so often mentioned in The Ring and the 
Book. 

The baptismal dates of the Franceschini and of Caponsacchi are 
taken from the Archives of Arezzo, which have yielded many other 
interesting details. Several of the footnotes are based upon the evidence 
adduced in the trial of Guido Franceschini in January-February, 1698, 
as contained in the actual source of Browning's poem, his '* square old 
yellow book." The manuscript here printed for the first time has much 
in common with the information in that book, but supplements it in 
various ways, and is the best prose account of the whole case which is 
known to exist.— W. Hall Griffin. 

The Trial and Death of Franceschini and his Companions 
FOR Murder and Assassination Committed on the Per- 
sons of Pietro Comparini, his Wife and Daughter, 

WHICH took place IN THE TIME OF InNOCENT XII. 

ABATE PAOLO FRANCESCHINI, born in Arezzo, Tus- 
cany, was of noble family, although he had inherited but 
a small patrimony; yet, being possessed of sufficient 
talent to push his fortunes, he moved to the city of 
Rome, where he was admitted by Cardinal Lauria ' to his household 

* Cardinal Lorenzo Brancati di Lauria, born 1612, made Cardinal i68i, died 
30 November, 1693. lie would be an excellent patron, being widely known for 



3IO THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

as Secretary of the Embassy. A natural fitness of mind gained him 
the favour of this Cardinal, who stood so high in the esteem of the 
Sacred College for his learning that it seemed by no means im- 
probable that he might be raised to the Pontificate. 

Under these favourable auspices, Paolo, who was desirous of 
making the most of his opportunities, thought of arranging a 
marriage for his brother Guido, so that he might, by means of a 
substantial dowry, re-establish the family fortunes. Guido had also 
found employment in Rome as Secretary of the Embassy to a 
Cardinal — Cardinal Nerli ' — but, either because he had not the 
opportunities or the skill of his brother, he had quitted this service. 
Now, although Paolo knew that the fact of his brother being out of 
employment would damage his chances of forming a good alliance, 
yet he did not cease to try and make an advantageous match, for he 
hoped that the reflection of his own importance might atone for the 
shortcomings of his brother. 

Guido was now getting towards middle life, of delicate constitu- 
tion, mediocre appearance, a disposition gloomy rather than pleasing 
— above all, with very little means, so that his matrimonial expecta- 
tions would be but slight unless he could profit by his brother's 
position. 

After having sought a number of alliances with people of good 
position, Paolo finally decided upon Francesca Pompilia, daughter 
of Pictro and Violante Comparini, because, as she was an only 
child, and, on account of the age of her parents there was no 
possibility of other offspring, she would succeed to 12,000 scudi 
held in trust; and Paolo hoped to make the match without difficulty, 
as the Comparini were rather beneath him than his equals by birth. 

There was a female hairdresser "^ who used to visit the Comparini 
with that freedom with which such women are admitted by those 
who desire to appear to their husbands more beautiful than they are, 
and are tolerated by those men who hold too high an opinion of the 

his learning, modesty, and liberality. I find Paolo, then aged thirly-three, 
dedicating a poem to him in 16S3 — doubtless the first step toward securing the 
Cardinal's favour. Cardinal Lauria secured fifteen votes at the Conclave which 
in 16S9 elected Alexander VIII, the i)redecessor of the "Pope" of Browning's 
poem. 

' Guido seems indeed to have missed his opportunity. Nerli was literary, 
very wealthy, and, like the Franceschini, a Tuscan — from Florence. Born 1636, 
made Cardinal 1673, he died, aged seventy-two, in 1708. Browning was not 
aware of the nanus of either Lauria or Nerli. 

- This "woman-dealer in perukes" figures in Tiriium Quid (430-51), where 
the bribe promised her is put at the modest sum of 20 zecchines, i.e. jClo, as 
against the 200 scudi — nearly ;iC~o<) of modern money — mentioned here. 



THE MARRIAGE PLANNED 311 

fidelity of their wives. Paolo considered this woman the most 
likely means of forwarding his matrimonial schemes. Guido there- 
fore, repeatedly went to the woman's shop in the [Piazzo Colonna] 
on various pretexts, and, having won his way into her confidence he 
occasionally turned the conversation upon the subject of his marry- 
ing, whereupon she told him, one day, that he might easily approach 
the daughter of the Comparini, who had a dowry worthy of him as 
she had the expectation of inheriting the trust-money, and also had 
few kinsfolk, these being the conditions of which he was in search. 
It was agreed, therefore, that, if she should succeed in bringing 
about the match, he would pay her 200 scudi. 

The hairdresser lost no time in opening the subject to Violante, 
who, being anxious that her daughter should succeed to the pro- 
perty, and also that she should be advantageously settled, agreed to 
speak to her husband, whose consent she felt disposed to obtain, 
should the facts be as they were represented. Violante spoke of the 
matter to Pietro, and he consented to entertain the proposal on 
condition of the verification of the wealth boasted of by the 
Franceschini, who, said he, must furnish a written statement attested 
by well-known people. 

The hairdresser informed the Franceschini of this, and they sent 
for an account of their real estate in Arezzo, amounting to an 
annual income of 1700 scudi, this statement being certified by 
people known to the Comparini, and also confirmed by them 
by word of mouth. 

Abate Paolo, fearing lest the fortune should slip through his 
fingers, did not wish to allow the Comparini time to change their 
minds ; on the contrary, in order to make sure of things, he desired 
to strengthen his position by the influence of Cardinal Lauria, his 
patron, by whom he had a marriage contract drawn up, his Eminence 
being pleased to show his interest in the welfare of a man whom he 
regarded with a certain degree of favour. 

Meanwhile Pietro Comparini, having made inquiries as to the 
social condition and the property of the Franceschini, found a state 
of affairs very diiferent from that represented, both in regard to their 
rank and their possessions. Thereupon he had warm disputes with 
his wife, who persisted in urging the marriage, and said that he had 
taken the advice of people who were envious of the welfare of both 
families, and wished to hinder the good fortune of the two house- 
holds ; and that therefore they ought not to depart from their first 
intention, for she was quite sure, from several truthful witnesses, 
that the Franceschini were of the first nobility in Arezzo, and not 
of the second, as was stated, and that the wealth mentioned in the 



312 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

written statement was exactly as declared. But the warmer her 
interest became, the more that of Pietro cooled down ; for, having 
an eye to his own interest, if he could not gain, at least he did not 
wish to lose by the marriage of his daughter. But what does not a 
man lose when he allows himself to be ruled by women ! He loved 
his wife so tenderly, that from the first day of his union with her 
he had made her the arbitress of his will : notwithstanding this, 
however, Violante, fearing that, in a matter of such importance, Pietro 
might rather be guided by good advice than yield to her flattery, 
and not being able to endure any delay in making sure of the trust- 
money — which would go to another family if the Comparini lacked 
descendants — she resolved to complete the marriage without the 
knowledge of Pietro. So, having obtained the consent of her 
daughter, who was always amenable to her commands, and having 
arranged matters with Guido, one morning she took Pompilia, 
suitably dressed, to San Lorenzo in Lucina, their parish church, and 
gave her in marriage.^ 

This was a heavy blow to Pietro, but, realizing that there was 
no remedy for it, he concealed his wrath by pretending that he had 
only been displeased at not having been at the marriage, and that 
this was forgotten in the pleasure of the wedding feast which was 
held at his house (in the Via Vittoria). For dowry, he made over 
to his daughter twenty-six bonds, with the ultimate succession to them 
all : and that very day, as they were talking of the advantages which 
would result to both households from the union of their interests, 
it was arranged that the Comparini should go to Arezzo ; and this 
took place a few days later, ^ the administration of all the property 
being left absolutely in the hands of Guido. On their arrival in 
Arezzo the Comparini were received by the mother and the relations 
of the Franceschini with all those marks of affection which are usual 
on such occasions ; but very speedily, as they saw more of one 
another, they passed into quarrels, and from these to acts of open 
hostiUty. The mother of Guido,^ a proud, niggardly woman, who 
kept house in a penurious style, and despotically limited even the 
bare necessities of life, provoked the Comparini to complain, and 
their remonstrances were answered at first by words of contempt 

' The real date of the marriage is August or September, 1693. Browning, 
for artistic reasons, places it in December — " one dim end of a December day " — 
on account of the gloom associated with it. 

^ This would be in November, 1693, early in the month. 

^ Guido's mother was Beatrice Romani, a woman of sixty-two in 1693, as 
she was born in 1631. She died, aged seventy, in 1701, three years after her 
son's execution. 



POMPILIA DISOWNED 313 

and then by threats. Violante, being a woman with her own share 
of natural pride, could not endure this, and therefore began to worry 
Pietro, and curse the day on which he had decided to go to Arezzo, 
laying upon him the whole blame for that for which she herself was 
responsible ! Pietro, who was one of those men who are beside 
themselves if a woman sheds a couple of tears, instead of reproaching 
her as the cause of the trouble, in that she had, against his will and 
without his knowledge, concluded the marriage, begged her with 
caresses to bear this ill-usage with patience, as it would perhaps 
cease when the Franceschini saw that their daughter sided with 
them. 

At this time Cardinal Lauria died [30 November, 1693], a 
Cardinal whose merits were beyond all praise, and Abate Paolo was 
appointed Secretary in Rome of the Order of the Knights of St. John 
of Malta/ and this increased the proud bearing of the Franceschini 
to such a degree that they now considered that the Comparini should 
deem themselves fortunate to be among their friends, much more 
their relations. 

Violante, who could not endure to live any longer under the 
proud sway of another woman, when she had been accustomed to 
command, had now quite regained the upper hand with her husband, 
and so worried him that she induced him to go back to Rome once 
more, and to this end the Franceschini supplied them with money 
sufficient for the journey, and for the furniture necessary for the 
house. ^ 

But scarcely were they arrived in Rome than, to the amazement 
of everybody, it was reported that Pietro had issued a judicial 
monition, in which he declared that Francesca Pompilia was not really 
his daughter, and that therefore he was not bound to pay the dowry. 
This document was certified by Violante, his wife, who deposed 
that, in order to keep off her husband's creditors in regard to the 
deed of trust, and to enjoy the interest of the bonds, she had feigned 
to be with child, and, that her deception should not be perceived by 
her husband, she had agreed with him that if ever this should 
happen they should have rooms apart until the birth of the child. 
She took the opportunity of the absence of Pietro, when busy over 

* This was a good appointment. The headquarters of the Knights in Rome 
was in the still existing building in the Via Condotti, close to the Piazza di Spagna. 
The home of the Comparini was close by. 

- The Comparini returned in March, 1694, to their former home in the Via 
Vittoria. Browning represents them as going to another house in the Via Paolina 
erroneously associated with the road at the south of Rome leading to the church 
of S. Ynolo /uori le tinira. 



314 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

his lawsuits one day, to bring about the appearance of the child. 
All passed off successfully owing to the sagacity of a nurse with 
whom she had arranged to provide all that was needful. Accord- 
ingly, in order that the man-servant should have no suspicion as to 
the fraud, they sent him off to the chemist's to have some prescrip- 
tions made up, and, during his absence, away went the nurse to 
fetch a child which she had brought into the world the day before 
for a neighbour, with whom she had made previous arrangements 
to this effect. Having got back to the house, she called through 
the open window to an acquaintance of the Comparini, everything 
being so neatly arranged that when the neighbour arrived there 
remained nothing to be done but to make her believe what was not 
really the fact.-^ 

This unexpected act of Pietro's was noised abroad in Rome like 
wildfire, and was listened to with no less amazement than displeasure, 
and the Franceschini, who were justly indignant, would have taken 
fitting vengeance had not their anger been tempered by the hope 
that, if Pompilia were not really and legitimately the child of Pietro 
and Violante, the marriage might be annulled, and their injured 
reputation thus reinstated. But, having taken the advice of a 
number of lawyers, and finding that their opinions differed, they did 
not wish to stake their chances upon an issue so doubtful ; for, if 
they instituted legal proceedings, they must inevitably acknowledge 
and presuppose the illegitimacy, and by such a confession they 
would themselves remain prejudiced in their claims upon the dowry. 
They therefore opposed the judicial notice of Violante and obtained 
a decision to the effect that Pompilia was so far to be regarded as 
the Comparini's daughter that the bonds promised in the marriage 
settlement were to be transferred to her. But Pietro appealed from 
this decision to the Signatura di Giustizia [the Court of Appeal]. 

The chief sufferer from this hatred between the two families was 
the unfortunate Pompilia, who remained by herself at Arezzo, 
exposed to the arbitrary treatment of her husband, her mother-in- 
law, and the Franceschini kindred, all of whom were mortally 
offended with her parents, so that not an hour passed without her 
being threatened with death. In a situation so desperate the heart 
of any woman, even of one more experienced, would have sunk 

' These events took place on 17 July, 1680, as the baptismal entry in S. 
Lorenzo in Lucina proves. It runs as follows : " Die 23 Julii 1680 Ego Bar- 
tholomceus Minius Curatus baptizavi infantem natam 17 hujus ex D. Petro Com- 
parini et ex D. Violante Peruzzi conjugibus degentibus in hac Parocchia, cui 
nomen impositum fuit Francisca Camilla Viitoria Angela Pompilia." {Cf. the 
opening lines oi I^ompilia.) 



CAPONSACCHI INTERVENES 315 

within her, much more that of a girl of sixteen who had no share in 
the deceit of her mother nor in the wiles of her father, and who, by 
reason of her good qualities, was worthy of caresses and not of 
cruelty. 

The unfortunate girl bore up as long as she could under their 
tyrannies, which daily became worse and worse, but, seeing that all 
prospect of peace was hopeless, she fled several times to the Governor 
of Arezzo ^ to seek the interposition of his authority with the Fran- 
ceschini ; and, as he gave her no help, she cast herself at the feet of 
the Bishop,^ who summoned Guido to his presence and reconciled 
them. But, as Guide's anger was increased by reason of such public 
appeals, he threatened her with certain death if ever she should do 
such a thing again. 

The wretched girl, seeing every avenue of peace closed, implored 
the help of Canon Conti,^ brother-in-law of the Franceschini, who 
was perfectly familiar with what she had had to suffer, as he used to 
visit the house ; and she begged him to save her life, which was in 
continual peril. He was moved to pity, and, knowing that there 
was no remedy but flight — in which, however, he could personally 
take no part, lest he should bring upon himself the hatred of the 
whole family connexion — he suggested that the only person for 
such an enterprise was Canon Caponsacchi,'' his personal friend, and 
in a remote degree related to him — a man whose spirit was no less 
apt to incur danger than to overcome it. 

Pompilia having accepted the advice of Conti, he lost no time in 
opening the subject to Caponsacchi, who, when the matter was first 
broached, manifested repugnance towards aiding a wife to flee from 
her husband, even though the only object in view was to accompany 
her to the home of her parents. But, on being fully informed as to 
the unbearable ill-treatment of Guido and his family, pity overcame 
every other feeling, and he accepted the undertaking. Pompilia, 
who now longed for this result, kept urging it upon him by means of 

' This, as the poem mentions, was Vinccnzo Marzi-Medici, governor from 
1693-95. Pompilia went to him in 1694, and he wrote a letter to Abate Paolo in 
Rome, giving him an account of the Comparini and their doings in Arezzo, dated 
2 August, 1694. Marzi-Medici, was not, however, as the poem says, a relative 
of the Grand Duke ; he was the son of a Florentine lawyer. 

"^ This Bishop — Archhi^ho^t the poem calls him — was Giovanni Matteo 
Marchctti, Bishop for thirteen years, from 1691-1704. He was of a well-known 
Pistoian family, and had a splendid collection of drawings by old masters, 
which came to England after his death. 

' Guido's only sister Porzia married Count Aldobrandini, Conti's brother. 

* Caponsacchi was aged twenty-four at this time (1697), having been baptized 
32 March, 1673. 



3i6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

letters ' and endearing incitements, always, however, preserving her 
fidelity as a wife, as may be gathered from her letters, in some of 
which she praises the modesty of Caponsacchi, and in others reproves 
him for having sent her some rather unbecoming verses, and begs 
him to preserve unsullied that good character which she has praised. 
The day of the flight having been arranged,'^ these two, with the 
assistance of Conti, got into a carriage, and, travelling as fast as 
possible — never stopping except when needful to change horses — 
they arrived, the second morning at dawn, at Castelnuovo. Here, 
although the landlord got ready one bed for both, Pompilia rested in 
a chair and Caponsacchi rushed down to the stable to hurry up the 
driver, 

Guido waked up some hours after Pompilia had departed, and, 
finding that she was not in bed, got up in a passion ; and seeing her 
jewel-case open and the jewels gone, together with some money 
which was kept there, he divined what had taken place. So he tore 
along the road to Rome on a good horse, and overtook the fugitives 
at the inn at Castelnuovo "' one hour after they had arrived. 

When she saw him appear, Pompilia, with a boldness such as 
despair frequently produces even in a sluggish nature, seized the 
sword of Caponsacchi, which was lying on a table, and, having 
drawn it, rushed out to meet Guido ; and calling him a traitor and 
a tyrant, threatened his life; but he, fearing that her boldness no 
less than the valour of Caponsacchi — whom he had not previously 
known to be her protector — might result rather in his own death 
than in his taking vengeance, turned his horse's head, and, rushing 
off to the magistrate, had them arrested and soon afterwards taken 
off to the New Prisons [in Rome, sixteen miles distant], where they 
were accused of the flight and then of adultery. 

Abate Paolo, who, as has been said, was Secretary in Rome for 
the Knights of Malta, made urgent representations to the Pope 
concerning the injury to his honour, and besought the Governor of 
Rome, Monsignor Pallavicino,'^ protesting that he ought to give 
judgment against Caponsacchi for having eloped with his sister-in-law, 

' Twenty-two such letters, or fragments of thcni, were said to have been found 
by Guido, and were produced in the evidence at his trial. They are of slight 
interest. 

* They fled on Sunday, 28 April, "seven hours after sunset" — i.e. about 
2 a.m. Browning artistically alters this to 23 April — St. George's Day. 

* The inn still exists unchanged, with the very room in which the scene here 
describetl took place. 

^ Marc Antonio Venlurini, mentioned as Governor in tlie poem, was in fact a 
Deputy-Governor for criminal cases — Locum Icnens in criminalibus. 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF FLIGHT 317 

and declare them both guilty of adultery, and that on this account 
his brother Guide ought to obtain possession of the whole dowry. 

Legal proceedings were instituted with all the rigour of the law, 
but there appeared no evidence of guilt against Pompilia and 
Caponsacchi except the letters indicating an affectionate intercourse, 
and written while the flight was being planned, the flight itself, and 
the depositions of the driver,^ who said that he had several times 
seen them, as he turned round while driving, face to face together — 
i.e. cheek against cheek — a thing which is no proof of wrongdoing, 
while the roughness of the roads, and the speed at which they were 
driving, by shaking them, might have been the cause. Wherefore 
the Court prudently sentenced Caponsacchi to three years' relegation 
in Civita Vecchia for his rash act in running away with a wife from 
the home of her husband, even though he had been actuated by 
motives of pity.^ 

Meanwhile the proceedings against Pompilia continued, and 
with the consent of the Franceschini she was sent under restraint 
to the monastery of the Scalette in the Lungara," Guido giving a 
bond that he would pay for her board. After some time it became 
evident that she was e?iceinte, and as the rules of the place did not 
allow of her remaining any longer there, the Governor of Rome, 
with the approval of Abate Paolo, who held a power of attorney for 
his brother, issued an order that Pompilia should be removed to the 
house of the Comparini, her parents, under security of 300 scudi, 
declaring at the same time that the obligation on Guido's part to 
pay for her board should cease the very day on which Pompilia 
should leave the monastery.* 

This suit, in which the Franceschini represented themselves as 
being solely actuated by a desire to repair their honour, was 
recognized as having for its chief motive their greed for money, 
so that there was not a single club in which the conduct of both 
sides was not criticized. For this reason the Knights of St. John 
quietly hinted to Abate Paolo that he had better resign his position 
as Secretary. The loss of so honourable a position gave free course 
to the malice of the tongues of his enemies, and reduced the mind 

' This was Francesco Borsi, called " Venerino," a servant of the landlord of 
the still existing Canale Inn at Arezzo. He drove them to Camoscia, that is, for 
the first night only. 

* This decree is dated 24 September, 1697. 

' The Scalette — so called from the steps in front of it— still exists, under the 
name of the " Buon Pastore." Browning chose to speak of the Convcrtite, who 
also had a home in the Lungara. 

^ This order is dated 12 October, 1697. 



3i8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

of Paolo lo such a state of anxiety that he felt ashamed to face even 
his dearest friends. He therefore decided to quit Rome and to pass 
to n land whither there should never come news of the dishonour 
which liad so deeply afilicled him.' 

Guido being infornicd of his departure and of the obligation now 
resting upon himself of repairing the honour of their house, reflected 
that if he, like his brother, should voluntarily exile himself, it would 
be regarded as a confirmation of that cowardliness of spirit with 
which he had been justly charged when he had overtaken his wife 
in her flight, and had not then and there taken that vengeance 
which was exj^ected at his hands. 

Her time having arrived, Fompilia gave birtli to a male child,'^ 
whom the Comparini sent out to nurse. Everybody thought, and 
in ])arlicular Violante. that this event would dispose Guido, by the 
very force of nature, to a reconciliation with his wite, while the 
minds of the Comparini, in spite of their declaration that Pompilia 
was not their child, might also be inclined to re-establish peace. 
The thought of Guido, however, was wholly different, for he was 
ceaselessly urged on by Paolo, who, even though absent, kept 
plotting to blot out of the world every memory of his own dishonour 
by the death of Pompilia, Pietro, and Violante. 

Guido had a field labourer, a bold man of evil life, to whom he 
repeatedly told exaggerated tales about the disgrace which his wife 
and the Comparini had brought upon his house ; and he confided to 
this man that, if he would aid him, he would be able to wipe out 
with their blood the stains upon his honour. The assassin at once 
agreed, and himself sugi:;estcd tliat. if other help were needed, he 
had three or four friends for whom he could vouch. Caiido's answer 
was that he should select three bold and trusty ones for the sake of 
seemity, in case of meeting with resistance, and that he should be 
particularly careful to engage them at as low a rate as he possibly 
could. 

This being all arranged, and the weapons suitable for such a deed 
made ready, Guido with his four companions, disguised, and with 
changed garments, took the road to Rome, and arrived'' at the 
house of the Comparini ^ two hours after sunset. One of tliem 

' I )i;ivo tiiiccil liiiu to Prai^iio, whoro ho piililishcil a poem in 1699. 

* A boy, Ciaotano, born iS l">ocon\bcr, 1697. 

* Thoy arrived at Rome 24 PeceiulH.>r, 1607. The iminlers took i^lace on 
Thm-silay, 2 January, 160S. 

* Browning phiees this outside Rimuo beyond the Porta S. Paolo; the niunlei'S 
aetually took plaee in a house — sinee relniill — which stood at the corner of the 
Via Vittoria and the Via Babuino, formerly calkxl Via Paolina. 



GUIDO'S ONSLAUGHT 319 

knocked at the door, and when Pietro answered, the assassin said 
that he had a letter to dehver from Civita Vecchia from Caponsacchi. 
When the women heard this, they told Pietro that he must tell the 
man to come back in the morning, and objected to his opening the 
door ; but Pietro being curious about the news from Caponsacchi, 
and the assassin making reply that he could not cull again next 
morning, as he had to depart that very night, Pietro opened the fatal 
door through which entered death for himself, for Violante, and for 
Pompilia, 

Beside himself with passion, Guido was the first to rush in with 
two companions '—the other two remaining to keep guard — and, 
having repeatedly stabbed the poor old man, they deprived him of 
life before he could utter a word. Scarcely had the unfortunate 
women beheld this than they were thrust through in a similar 
manner and experienced the same fate ; the blows of (luido being 
directed against the unhappy Poni})ilia, and being accompanied with 
innumerable insults. After having trampled her under foot several 
times and repeated his blows, Guido, not sure that his fury had 
accomplished its purpose, told his companions to see if she were 
really dead, and one of them lifting her up by the hair and then 
letting her suddenly fall, made sure that she was no longer alive. 

The barbarous slaughter over, and Guido having paid the cut- 
throats the money agreed upon,^ he wished to separate from them, 
but they would not allow either him or any of the others to depart, 
fearing lest one should kill the other, as not infrequently happens in 
such crimes. Or, perchance, the cut-throats had arranged with their 
leader, if they kept together, to kill Guido, supposing that he would 
have upon him a large sum of money, and therefore, it is said, they 
would not consent to his going away. Accordingly they took the 
road to Arezzo together, being obliged to travel on foot on account 
of not having been able to procure post-horses. 

Life was totally extinct in Pietro and Violante by reason of their 
numerous wounds, but Pompilia was still living, although her wounds 
were even more numerous,^ for in her innocence, and aided by 
Divine mercy, she had been able to feign death so well that she 
deceived the assassins. When, therefore, she could see that they 
were gone, collecting her dying breath, she had still sufficient strength 
of voice to make the neighbours hear her cries for help. 

• These two were Francesco Pasquino and Alessandro Giovanni Baldeschi. 
Those who kept guard were Biaggio Agoslinelli and Domenico Gambassini. 

* This accounl diftcrs on this point from that used by Browning, who says the 
assassins were not paid, and therefore were about to kill Ciuido. 

' Twenty-two dagger wounds, five deadly. 



320 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Being found in a dying state, the needs of the soul were first 
eagerly attended to, and afterwards those of her body. Her wounds 
were so many in number, and of such a character, that, although 
they did not immediately deprive her of life, yet they rendered her 
death inevitable ; an event which, to the universal sorrow of those 
who attended her, and of as many as had information about so 
lamentable a case, took place a few days later .^ 

The constancy with which she endured the sufferings of her 
medical treatment was no less amazing than the love excited by 
her resignation to the Divine will ; while not only did she not 
blame the cruelty of her husband, but with fervent prayers she 
implored God to pardon him. 

As evidence of the compassion of those who ministered to her 
soul and to her body, I quote the following sworn testimonies, not 
only as to her innocence, but also as to the happy passage of her 
pure soul to heaven. 

Testimonies as to the aforesaid Statement 

" I, the undersigned Barefoot Augustinian, solemnly testify that, 
having ministered to Signora Pompilia from the first moment of the 
woful case until the last minute of her life, I state and swear, as I 
am a priest in the presence of that God who shall be my Judge, 
that I have remarked and have been amazed at the innocent and 
pure conscience of this ever-blessed girl ; and in the four days 
[2-6 January] which she survived, she, having been exhorted by me 
to pardon [her husband], replied with tears in her eyes, and \Nith 
calm and compassionate voice, ' May Jesus pardon him as I have 
already done with all my heart.' But what was most wonderful was 
that, although she suffered great pain from her injuries, I never heard 
her utter an offensive or an impatient word, or even give any sign of 
such, either against God or her fellow-beings ; but with uniform sub- 
mission to the Divine will she would say, ' The Lord have mercy on 
me ' ; a fact, in truth, which is incompatible with a spirit not closely 
united to God; and such union does not take place in a single 
moment, but truly is due to long-continued habit. Moreover, I 
declare that I have uniformly noticed her to be most modest ; and in 
particular on those occasions in which the doctors attended to her, 
so that, if she had not been of good habits, on such occasions she 
would not have given evidence of modesty in regard to certain little 

' Pompilia died on Monday, 6 January, 1698, the day on which she is supposed 
to speak in the poem. 



WITNESSES TO HER INNOCENCE 321 

details carefully noticed by me, and much wondered at, that a young 
girl should be able to bear herself in the presence of so many men 
with such modesty and composure as did this saintly girl, even 
though half dead. And if we are to believe what the Holy Spirit, 
speaking by the mouth of the Evangelist^ says, in the 7th chapter 
of St. Matthew, arbor mala 7ion potest bonos frudus facere^ noticing 
that he says, " non potest [/.^. can not], and not non facit," \i.e. 
does not] : — that is, he pronounces it impossible to translate our 
powers into acts of perfection when these forces are themselves 
imperfect and tainted with evil — we must perforce say that this girl 
was full of goodness and modesty, since with all ease and perfection 
she behaved virtuously and modestly during the close of her life. 
Moreover, she died full of faith in God, her heart filled with Divine 
grace, and with all the sacraments of the Church, so that all who 
were in her presence were filled with wonder and pronounced her a 
saint. I say no more for fear that I may be taxed with being partial. 
I know full well that Solus Deus est scrutator cordium : but I know 
also that ex abimdantia cordis os loquitur^ and that my own Augustine 
declares. Talis vita, Ji?iis ita : wherefore, having remarked in this 
ever-blessed girl devout words, virtuous deeds and most modest acts, 
and a death in the fear of God, for the satisfaction of my own con- 
science I am obliged, and can do no other than declare that it must 
needs be that she has ever been a young girl good, modest, and 
honourable. 

The above is my testimony, whereof in my own hand-writing, 
this loth day of January . 

[Signed] Fra Celestine di S. Anna ^ 
Barefoot Augustinian 



AFFIDAVIT SIGNED BY SEVERAL WITNESSES 

We, the undersigned, having been asked to state the truth, give 
full and incontrovertible testimony under oath, that on the occasion 
on which we were present and rendered assistance in the last illness 
from which Francesca Pompilia died, she having been several times 
questioned by priests and others as to whether she had committed 

' From this name Browning has constructed a wholly imaginary "Hospital 
of St. Anna," in which Pompilia is supposed to die after Fra Celestine — who is 
often mentioned in the poem — has confessed her. These depositions supplied the 
poet with the suggestion for his conception of an idealized Pompilia, and it was 
mainly in allusion to them that he is reported to have said, " I assure you that I 
found her, just as she speaks and acts in my poem, in that old book." 
Y 



322 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

any ofience against Guido her husband, which would have afforded 
him reason to ill-treat her in the manner we saw, and cause her to be 
done to death ; she uniformly replied that she had not at any time 
committed any such fault whatever, and had always lived in all 
chastity and purity. And this we know through having been present 
during her sufferings ; and from having heard all the said questions 
and answers ; and also from having treated her medically and aided 
her ; and from having heard her replies to the aforesaid questions 
during the four days that she survived while suffering from her 
wounds, and from having seen her, and heard her, and witnessed her 
die like a saint. 

In evidence whereof, etc. 

This loth day of January, 

I, NicOLO CoNSTANTio, who took part in the medical treatment. 
I, Placido Sardi, priest, with my own hand confirm what Fra 

Celestine has said above, having been present as above. 
I, MiCHELE NicoLO Gregorio, Confirm the above. 
I, Giuseppe d'Andilli, with my own hand, etc. 

I, DOMENICO GODYN, etC. 

I, LucA CoRSi, etc. 

I, Gig. Battista Guiteus.^ 

I, Gig. Battista Mucha. 

I, Abate Liberato Barberito, Doctor of Theology, hereby give 
full and indubitable evidence that, having been summoned to attend 
the death-bed of the late Signora Francesca Pompilia Comparini, 
I repeatedly noticed, and in particular during one entire night, how 
she bore with Christian resignation the pains of her wounds, and 
with more than human generosity pardoned the wrongs done her by 
him who had so cruelly caused her death. Thus, during the whole 
of the aforesaid night I observed the tenderness of her conscience, 
the time having passed in affording me evidence that her everyday 
life had been full of heroic Christian perfection. And I can testify 
from the experience which I have had, during the four years in 
which I was Judge of the Ecclesiastical Court of the late Archbishop 
of MonopoU, that I have never seen any one meet death in such a 
state of mind, especially when this had been due to violence. 
\Vherefore, in evidence, etc.. 

This loth day of January, 1698, 

I, Abate Liberato Barberito 

' Guiteus was an apothecary who administered medicine and helped in the 
medical treatment. Mucha was his assistant. 



GUIDO'S CONFESSION 323 

All these sworn testimonies form part of the evidence in the suit 
against Guido,' and are signed and confirmed by the above- 
mentioned witnesses who took part in ministering to the bodily and 
spiritual needs of Pompilia until her death. 

Divine justice, which will not suffer so atrocious a crime to pass 
unpunished, brought it about that the evil-doers were overtaken at 
dawn by the police at the New [Merluzza] " Inn [at Baccano], some 
few miles from Rome ; where, after a scanty meal, overcome with 
the fatigue of their journey and with sleep, they had lain down to 
rest by the fire. The police suddenly rushed in, and pointing their 
carbines at the heads of the offenders, they were seized and 
bound. 

They were removed at once to the New Prisons [in the Via 
Giulia, Rome], and the Governor of Rome informed the Pope of the 
barbarous murder and of the arrest of the guilty ; he issued orders 
that there should be no delay in proceeding against them with all 
the rigour of the law, this being the case which, by reason of the 
consequences that might ensue, the Court was bound to examine 
with the most scrupulous attention. 

Far less than had been imagined, however, was it found needful to 
apply torture to ensure the confession of the assassins and of Guido, 
who more emphatically than the others persisted in denying his guilt. 
Notwithstanding this, simply at the sight of the torture his heart 
failed him and he made a full confession, although he declared that 
he had been actuated in his crime by no other motive than the 
desire to make reparation for his honour, which had been so publicly 
injured — a thing which any man, even if of ignoble birth, would 
undertake, much more one like himself, who was of good family ; 
and that, if in his first examination he had denied the truth of this, 
he had done it solely so as not to prejudice his companions who had 
helped him in a deed worthy of all indulgence, because their only 
motive had been honour. 

With the confession of Guido and its ratification by the others 
the trial was at an end, and sentence was given,3 the assassins being 
condemned to the gallows and Guido to the fnannaia [a kind of 
guillotine], an instrument of death conceded to him rather out of 

' All three, togelher with some additional matter, are printed in " the book " 
which the poet bought. 

- The name is omitted in the Roman MS. I supply it from another source. 

' The Court gave sentence on Tuesday, i8 f'ebruary. The lawyers for the 
defence, however, appealed to the Pope, who signed the death-warrant on Friday, 
21 February — the day on which Innocent XII is supposed, in the poem, to utter 
his noble monologue. 



324 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

respect to his having taken minor reUgious orders than for other 
reasons. 

The written arguments of [Desiderius Spreti] the Advocate, and 
[Hyacinthus de Arcangelis] the Procurator of the Poor, in their 
defence on the plea of honour were so able that there is no mention 
of more learned pleadings ; ^ but the charges against the accused 
were so numerous, and each of them punishable by death, that they 
were overpowere d no less by the character than by the number of 
these. The bearing of deadly arms of prohibited shape ; the killing 
of Pietro and Violante, who had not been accomplices in the flight 
of Pompilia; the fact of the murders having taken place in lite 
pendente, in the home of the Comparini, which, with the consent of 
Guido, the Court had assigned to Pompilia as a secure place of con- 
finement; and many other accusations of weight, brought into 
prominence the profound learning of the counsel for the defence 
and the justice of the condemnation of the guilty. 

Although, with the usual hope of all who know themselves guilty 
of a crime punishable with death, Guido had flattered himself that 
he should be able to save his life on the plea of honour ; yet, when 
the unexpected condemnation was pronounced, he did not yield 
himself up to such ill-regulated manifestations as for the most part 
occur among those who pass through so terrible an experience. He 
remained like one dazed ; then, after some moments, he heaved a 
deep sigh, accompanied by a few tears, which by their extraordinary 
size indicated mortal symptoms, and exclaimed : " Verily I feared a 
heavy sentence, but not that of death. My offence is great, but my 
love of honour has never allowed me to see it in its true light until 
now, when it has been adjudged by justice, for which I have so pro- 
found a veneration that I do not wish to appeal even to God, to 
whom alone I turn as the sole source of mercy. Except by the will 
of God, I should never have come to this awful pass, and this I 
desire should be a source of comfort to me, and not of pain, so that, 
by my utter resignation to His will, I may acquire some claim to 
Divine pardon." And hereupon he cast himself into the arms of 
the Frati and showed such signs of lively contrition that his prayers 
were accompanied by their tears rather than by their exhortations. 

The four accomplices did not by any means dispose themselves 

* The pleadings here alluded to are those contained in the poet's " square old 
yellow book." The two pleas by Spreti were especially commended for their 
learning. As Advocate of the Poor he was the leading lawyer for the defence ; 
Arcangeli, who wrote three pleas, being one of his Frcairators. The poet, for 
reasons of his own, has chosen to make Spreti the "junior " of Arcangeli. The 
eleven pleas in the trial are all in Latin. 



JUSTICE HAS ITS WAY 325 

for death with the same resignation ; for, as their mental capacity 
was in keeping with their viler nature, they could not be persuaded 
of the justice of their condemnation. The oldest and the youngest ' 
were the most firm in their obstinacy ; the former because his heart 
had been hardened by so many years of evil life, the latter because 
he felt so bitterly the dreadful punishment for this first crime, com- 
mitted in the flower of his youth, he having also shed not a drop of 
blood, his only offence being that he had been induced to keep 
guard at a door by which Guido had to pass that he might wipe 
away with the blood of his enemies the stains upon his honour. 

The nearer the hour of execution approached, the more the 
obstinacy of these two unfortunate men increased, so that the Frati 
were, so to say, in despair about their repentance ; when Divine 
mercy, which accomplishes wonders even when they are least expected, 
penetrated their hearts, and thus gave glorious evidence of its omni- 
potence. Finally, they yielded to God, and the memory of their 
offences, which had hitherto rendered them obstinate, became, 
under the illumination of Divine grace, the means of disposing them 
to repentance and of fitting them for absolution. 

These souls being secured to God after so prolonged a struggle, 
the procession started from the New Prisons of Tor di Nonna to 
the scaffold, which was set up in the Piazza del Popolo in view of 
the city gate and the Corso. In the middle was the block on a high 
platform, made much broader than usual, and having carefully 
arranged steps leading up to it ; the gallows being placed, one on 
each side, at equal distances. Vast as is the area of the Piazza, 
there was not a single foot which was not occupied with raised 
stands, and these, being draped with tapestry and other decorations, 
formed a theatre suited rather for festive games than for a solemn 
tragedy. 

His four companions preceded Guido^ each in a separate cart, 
attended, as usual, by the pious Frati, and followed by a huge crowd 
of people, who prayed that they might have a blessed end, of which, 
to judge by their contrite resignation, there seemed a sure and 
certain hope. 

Guido Franceschini hardly ever took his eyes from the crucifix, 
except when nature became faint from his continued gaze, and then 
he turned away his head, but not his heart, which being wholly given 
to his Creator, there remained no portion for himself. Arriving at 
the Piazza di Pasquino, the tumbrels halted before the church of the 
Agonizzanti, where it is customary to expose the Host and to bestow 

' This, as far as I caa discover, was Biaggio Gambassini. 



326 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the Benediction upon condemned criminals on the day of their 
execution. Guido here fell upon his knees and recited, in a voice 
clearly audible to the bystanders, several verses of the Miserere^ 
among them this : " Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all my 
iniquities " [Psalm li. 9], accompanying his words with such demon- 
strations of sorrow and repentance that the people, in tears, mani- 
fested as much grief as the condemned man. Guido's companions 
received the Benediction with similar devotion ; but the behaviour 
of the youngest was unprecedented : beside himself with love to God, 
his words were like those of one inspired, so that the priests, with 
all their learning, were filled with humility. 

Thence, through the most inhabited streets, they continued their 
way to the Piazza del Popolo, where all suffered death, Guido being 
the last.^ They exhibited the same signs of contrition as they had 
shown while being prepared for death; and just as the youngest 
had given special tokens during life, so it pleased God that these 
should again appear at his death ; for as the hangman was casting 
him off, he clasped to his bosom the crucifix — that emblem of mercy 
by which they had just been assured of Divine pardon. This made 
the populace all the more certain of his salvation, just as it filled 
them with compassion for his untimely death. 

Never was there a greater concourse of people at an execution 
in Rome, nor is there recollection of a case which formed so universal 
a subject of conversation. Some defended the Comparini, on the 
ground that they had received ill-usage ; others, the Franceschini, 
on the point of honour ; but upon calm reflection, both were 
adjudged equally guilty — except Pompilia, who, being totally 
ignorant of the truth, had committed no other fault than that of 

* This was on Saturday, 22 February, 1698. The Guido of the poem was 
then aged fifty : the Guido of history was a man of forty, who had married at 
thirty-five. Abate Paolo, the " second son " of the poem, was really the eldest 
son and Guido's senior by some eight years ; while 

" The boy of the brood, the young Girolamo, 
Priest, Canon," 

was born four years after Paolo. The dales in the baptismal register of thePieve 
church are : 28 October, 1650, Paolo ; 2 January, 1653, Porzia ; 5 August, 1654, 
Girolamo ; and on 14 January, 1657 [1658 N.S.], Guido di Tommaso di Girolamo 
Franceschini e di Beatrice di Guido Romani sua consorte. The Guido of history 
was therefore not the " Head of the House," nor was he a Count. The family 
seems at that date to have belonged to the fourth of the eight " degrees of 
nobility " distinguished in Arezzo. A certain Count Giacomo — Jacobus Comes 
Franceschini— died there on 26 January, 1399, and is the first of the name 
mentioned. The title, it would appear, had gone to another branch of the 
family. 



"THE PITY OF IT" 327 

having consented to a marriage at the command of her mother 
without the knowledge of her father ; and who had fled from her 
husband's home, under fear of death, with which she had been 
repeatedly and unjustly threatened. 

The union of these two families had its origin in deception : on 
the part of the Franceschini, in the fraud as to the property which 
they did not possess ; and on the part of the Comparini as to the 
birth of Pompilia, who either was not their child, or had been said 
not to be when she really was. The deceit of the Franceschini 
sprang from their greed to secure the trust-money ; that of the 
Comparini from a desire to add to their comforts ; so that everything 
was done contrary to what is right by both human laws and divine. 
Wherefore there justly followed from a bad beginning a worse end, 
as has been described above. 



INDEX 



Abd el Kadr, 6, 128 

Abel, Mr. (musician), 16 and nole i 

Academy, The, on Jochanaji Hakka- 
dosh, 273 

Adam, Melchior, 72 and note i 

Addison, Joseph, 77 note i 

iEschylus, 69, 250, 263 

Agrippa, H. Cornelius, 22, 65 

Albemarle, Lord, 279 

Alfieri, V., 126, 129, 162 

Alford, Lady Marian, 242, 254 

Aliprandi, 91 

Allingham, William, 187 

Ampere, M., 194 

Ampthill, Lord, 21S 

Andersen, Hans, 220-1 

Angerstein, Mr., 11 

Archer, Mr, William, 119 

Arnould, Joseph, his description of 
Pauline, 33 ; on Browning's devotion 
to Shelley, 66 ; one of the *' Collo- 
quials," 80 ; sketch of his career, 82 ; 
his estimate of Browning, 83 ; and of 
Domett, 87 ; describes performance 
of ^ Blot in the ^Scutcheon, 11 6-8 
his opinion oi Paracelsus, etc., 134-5 
his description of Chorley, 137 
tries to get Domett back, 138 ; com 
plains of Browning's obscurity, 300 
other references to, 88, 179 

Apuleius, 288 

Ashburton, Lady, 242 

Aspland, Rev. Robert, 43 

Athe7ia:uin, The, reviews Pauline, 58 ; 
reviews Paracelsus, 73 ; supports 
Macready, 117; Chorley connected 
with, 137 ; Miss Barrett writes in, 
146 ; reviews Christinas Eve and 
Easter Day, 1 72 ; suggests Mrs. 
Browning as laureate, 177; describes 
reception of Colombe's Birthday, 190 ; 
reviews The Ring and the Book, 240 ; 
reviews Aristophanes'' Apology, 256 ; 
rates The Inn Album highly, 258 ; 



prints Browning's sonnet on E. 

Fitzgerald, 293 ; other references to, 

92, 106, 140, 167, 186, 222, 239 
Aurora Leigh, 77 note r, 164, 189, 196, 

208, 209, 210, 212, 253 
Avison, Charles, 9, 15, 16, 17 



B 



Baillie, Joanna, 106 

Baldinucci, Filippo, his Notizie, 15, 
261 and note I 

Balliol, The Master of, 289-90 

Barrett, Alfred, 5 

Barrett, Arabel, 150, 180, 187, 199, 
209, 221, 225, 226, 237 

Barrett, Edward, 145 

Barrett, Edward Moulton, 5, 143, 144, 
145, 149, 150, 155, 156, 172, 209, 210 

Barrett, Mrs. E. M., 144 

Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett. See Brown- 
ing, Mrs. 

Barrett, George, 149, 151 

Barrett, Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook), 
5, 150, 172, 180, 187, 209, 220 

Barrett, Samuel, 143, 150 

Bartoli, Daniel, 9, 19, 20 

Bate, Miss Geraldine, 152, 154, 163, 

195 

Baity, Dr., 77 note I 

Beddoes, T. L., 272 

Beethoven, L. von, 123 

Bell, Mrs. R. Courtenay, 273 

Ben Ezra, Rabbi, 234 

Benkhausen, Chevalier George dc, 61 

Bennett, W. C, 180 

Benzons, The, 243, 292 

Benzon, Ernest, 261 

Biographie Universelle, The, 25 

Bitiskius, F., 69-72 

Blachford, Lord, 264 

Blagden, Miss, 87 ; at Bellosguardo, 
164 ; her friendship with the Brown- 
ings, 171 ; Browning writes of 
Milsand to, 182; Mrs. Browning 



330 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 



writes to, i88 ; with the Brownings 
at Alia Villa, 210; and at Siena, 
220 ; her last visit to Mrs. Browning, 
222 ; her care for " Penini," 224-5 » 
hears from Browning about "the 
Roman murder story," 227 ; and 
about his attitude to life, 236 ; death 
of, 247 

Blanchard, Laman, 53, 76, 122 

Blomfield, Bishop, 293 

Blundell, Dr., 54 

Borrichius, Olaus, 70 

Bourgeois, Sir F., 11, 15 

Bowring, Sir John, 220 

Boyd, Hugh, 144. 145, 146, 14S, 151 

Boyle, Mary, 162 and note I 

Brackenbury, Sir Henry, 244 

Bradley, Dean, 282 

Brewster, Sir David, 203 

Bronson, Mrs., 17; Browning's friend- 
ship w-ith, 273-4 ; entertains Brown- 
ing at Asolo, 280-1 

Brougham, Lord, 203 

Browning, Jane, 5 

Browning, Margaret Morris, 3 note i, 

Browning, Reuben, his gifts to his 
nephew, the poet, 6, 7 ; his descrip- 
tion of the poet's father, 7, 8, 12 ; 
makes de Ripert-Monclar known to 
the poet, 65 

Browning, Robert (grandfather of the 
poet), career and temperament of, 
2, 3, 4 ; extract from the will of, 5 ; 
his reading, 7 

Browning, Robert (father of the poet), 
I ; his kindly disposition, 2 ; leaves 
the West Indies, 3 ; his marriage, 4 ; 
his attainments, 7 ; description of, 
by his half-brother, 8 ; his walks with 
his son, II ; his leanings in art, 12 ; 
his grotesque sketches, 13 ; his learn- 
ing, 15; his love of history, 17-8; 
annotates his books, 19 ; his version 
of the Pied Piper, 21 and note I ; 
reads aloud to his son, 25-6 ; enters 
him at London University, 48 ; his 
devotion to him, 49 ; joins the 
Congregationalists, 50; his idea of 
Bordello's story, 99 and note i, 100 ; 
his deUght at Landor's appreciation 
of his son, 134; a schoolfellow of 
Kenyon, 140 ; greets his son's wife 
and child, 180 ; removes to Paris, 
186-7 j his fondness for the grotesque, 
187 note I ; meets his son in Paris, 
211 ; his proposed visit to Fontaine- 
bleau, 221 ; with lus son at St.Enogat, 
224 ; and at Sainte Marie, 233 ; 
death of, 237 

BroAsming, Robert, the poet, birth and 



parentage of, l ; his grandfather, 2 ; 
his father's boyhood in the West 
Indies, and return to England, 3 ; 
his mother, 4 ; his father and grand- 
father reconciled, 5 ; his uncle Reu- 
ben, 6 ; his appreciation of A Song to 
David, 6, 7 ; his home up-bringing, 
9 ; autobiographical importance of 
his Parleying^, 9-20 ; his love of 
painting, how fostered, 9-15 ; his 
fa therms sketches, 12 ; his early love 
of music, 15-6 ; his music-masters, 
16, 17; his lifelong devotion to 
mtisic, 17 ; his historical studies, 17- 
8 ; his Italian studies, 20 ; his 
indebtedness to Wanley, 20-5 ; his 
father's version of the Pied Pipfr, 
21 ; his use of the Biographie Uni- 
verselle, 25 ; Kenyon and Kinglake 
on his erudition, 26 ; his home, 28 ; 
his schooldays at Peckham, 29 ; his 
precocity, 30 ; his opinion of his 
schoolmaster, 31 ; elements of auto- 
biography in Paiilim, 32, 34 ; his 
dramatic impulse, 34-6 ; his love of 
animals and birds, 6 ; as exemplified 
in Pippa Passes and Pauline, 37 ; 
frequents the Surrey gardens, 38 ; 
his love of nature, 39-40 ; his Incon- 
dita, 41 ; Byronic ir-fluence, 42 ; his 
acquaintance with W. J. Fox. 43 ; 
his intimacy with the Flowers, 44-6 ; 
his period of revolt, 47-50 ; leaves 
school, 47 ; at London University, 
48 ; makes acquaintance %vith Shel- 
ley's poetry, 51-3 ; chooses poetry 
as his vocation, 54 ; attends lectures 
at Guy's hospital, 54 ; his intimacy 
with the SUverthomes, 54-5 ; sees 
the gipsies at Dulwich, 56 ; publishes 
Pauline, 57 ; visits Russia, 61-3 ; 
his acquaintance with de Ripert- 
Monclar, 64-5 ; begins to write 
Paracelsus, 66 ; his high ambitions, 
68 ; his studies preparatory to Para- 
celsus, 69-72 ; its publication, 72 ; 
and reception, 73 ; his acquaintance 
with Macready and Forster, 74 ; his 
love of the drama, 75 ; at Elstree, 
76 ; at the Ion supper, 77 ; his early 
friends, 79-86 ; his parting with 
Domett, 87-8 ; meditates Sordello, 
89 ; his first Italian journey, 94-8 ; 
oilers Macready a play on Straifford, 
107 ; production of his Strafford, 
108-9; present in the pit, Iio ; fre- 
quents Covent Garden theatre, lli- 
2 ; ofifers Macready A Blot in tfu 
''Scutcheon, 1 13; its production and 
reception, 1x6-8; quaiTels with 
Macready, 119; offers Colombo s 



INDEX 



331 



Birthday to Charles Kean, 120-1 ; 
removal of his family to Hatcham, 
122 ; publishes Bells and Pomegran- 
ates, 124-133 ; touches on current 
politics, 131 ; his growing reputation, 
134-5 ; his intimacy with Carlyle, 
136 ; and with Miss Martineau, 136- 
7 ; and with the Procters, 138 ; and 
with Miss Haworth, 139 ; meets 
Kenyon, 140 ; his first meeting with 
Miss Barrett, 142 ; co-worker 
with her for R. H. Home, 147 ; 
his first letter to Miss Barrett, 148 ; 
growth of their intimacy, 149 ; marries 
Miss Barrett, 15 1-2 ; and leaves 
England, 152 ; at Pisa, 153 ; his offer 
to Monckton Milnes, 157 ; settles at 
Florence, 159-60 ; visits Vallombrosa, 
161 ; interested in the Eisorgituento, 
162-4 ; furnisht Casa Guidi, 165 ; 
visits Fano and Ancona, 165-6 ; 
ill, 167 ; makes acquaintance wilh 
W. \V. Story, 167-8 ; birth of his 
son, 168 ; death of his mother, 169 ; 
at Bagni di Lucca, 169-170; his 
views on socialism, 171 ; publishes 
Christmas Eve and Easter Day, 172 ; 
visits Siena, 176 ; returns to England, 
I77'"8 ; his sojourn in London, 179- 
80; and in Paris, 181; makes ac- 
quaintance with Milsand, 182 ; writes 
introduction to the (spurious) Shelley 
letters, 183 ; settles his father and 
sister in Paris, 186 ; returns to Lon- 
don, 187 ; and to Florence, 188 ; 
makes acquaintance with Frederick 
Tennyson, 189 ; and with Robert 
Lytton, 190 ; hears of the production 
of Colo/nle's Birthday, 190; inter- 
course with the Storys at Bagni di 
Lucca, 191 ; visits Rome, 192 ; fre- 
quents the studios there, 193 ; at 
Mrs. Sartoris' house, 194 ; meets de 
Ripert-Monclar, 195 ; sets out for 
England, 196 ; finishes Men and 
Women, igy ; reads the proofs to 
Fox, 198 ; answers some objections, 
200 ; present at D. D. 'Home's 
seance, 203 ; expresses his dissatis- 
faction thereat, 204 ; and his con- 
viction of Plome's fraud, 205 and 
note 2 ; hears Tennyson read Maud, 
206 ; visits the Dulwich gallery, 207 ; 
migrates to Paris, 208 ; in the Isle of 
Wight, 209 ; returns to Florence, 
209 ; his delight at the success of 
Aurora Leigh, 210 ; meets his father 
in Paris, 211; visits Havre, 212; 
and Rome, 213 ; his crowded en- 
gagements, 214; takes charge of 
Landor's affairs, 216 ; at Siena, 217 ; ' 



at Rome, 2i8 ; writes the first draft 
of Hohenstiel-Schwangau, 219 ; at 
Siena for the last time, 220 ; his 
wife's failing health, 221 ; and death, 
222 ; leaves Italy, 223 ; at St. Enogat, 
224 ; his occupations in London, 

225 ; settles at Warwick Crescent, 

226 ; meditates " the Roman murder 
story," 227 ; how he found the Book, 
228 ; offers it as a subject to various 
friends, 229 ; reprints his wife's 
essays, 231 ; objects to her life being 
written, 232 ; publishes Dramatis 
Persona, 233 ; his quarters at Sainte 
Marie, 233 ; his love of the actual, 
234 ; at Cambo, 235 ; a description 
of him at this period, 236 ; loses his 
father and his sister-in-law, 237 ; at 
Croisic, 237-8 ; receives the degree 
of M.A. by diploma, 238 ; his friend- 
ship with Mr. G. M. Smith, 239 ; 
The Ring and the Book published, 
240 ; rests from composition, 241 ; 
in Scotland, 242 ; in Normandy 
with Milsand, 242-3 ; publishes 
Balaustion's Adventure, 243 ; and 
Prince Hohenstiel-Schzuangau, 244 ; 
his greatness recognized, 246 ; 
welcomes Domett back to England, 

247 ; advises him about his poem, 

248 ; publishes Fifine at the Fair, 

249 ; finds a subject for a poem at St. 
Aubin, 250 ; publishes Red Cotton 
Night-Cap Country, 25 1 j on Shakes- 
peare, 252 ; translating Euripides, 
253 ; at a dinner-party, 254 ; on 
vivisection, 254 ; friendship with 
Miss Anne Egerton Smith, 255 ; on 
the critics of Aristophanes^ Apology, 
256 ; and of The Inn Albutn, 257 ; 
on Rossetti's poetry, 257 ; offends 
Swinburne, 258 ; turns on his critics, 
259 ; maintains his right to do so, 
260 ; another protest, 261 ; his 
reminiscence of Leigh Hunt's talk, 
262 ; translates the Agamemnon, 
263 ; his sojourn at La Saisiaz and 
Miss Smith's death there, 263-4; 
publishes La Saisiaz, 264 ; revisits 
Italy, 265 ; stays at Gressoney St. 
Jean, 266; and at St. Pierre de 
Chartreuse, 267 ; revisits Asolo, 
267-8 ; publishes Dramatic Idylls, 
268 ; on Clive, 268 ; his letters about 
the Browning Society, 269-71 ; 
receives the D.C.L. degree at Oxford, 
271 ; publishes yocoscria, 272 ; his 
friendship with Mrs. Bronson, 273 ; 
his life in Venice, 274 ; publishes 
Ferishtah's Fancies, 275 ; in Edin- 
burgh, 275-6 ; at Llangollen, 277 ; 



332 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 



publishes Parleyings with Certain 
People of Importance in their Day, 
277 ; at Primiero, 27S ; farewell 
visits, 279 ; last sojourn at Asolo, 
280-1 ; his illness at Venice, 282 ; 
Asolando published, 282 ; his death, 
282 ; and funeral, 283 ; his character 
a consistent one, 284 ; quality of his 
conversation, 285 ; his capacity [for 
enthusiasm, 286 ; his modesty, 287 ; 
his wide reading and exactitude, 288 ; 
his political opinions, 289-90 ; liable 
to explosions of anger, 291 ; instances 
of this, 291-3 ; his devotion to his 
wife's memory, 293-4 ; his religious 
beliefs, 294 ; his attitude to Dar- 
winism, 295 ; and to Christianity, 
296 ; his letter on the subject, 297 ; 
the main elements in his theology, 
298 ; his appearance and health, 299 ; 
the question of his obscurity con- 
sidered, 300 ; accessible to judicious 
criticism, 301 ; his attitude towards 
his own poetry, 302 ; the quality of 
his achievement, 303 ; his poems, 
references to : — 

Abt Vogler, 17, 234, 297 
Agamemnon, The, 256, 258, 263, 

288 
Andrea delSarto, 10, 60, 1 3 1, 199, 

200, 2S6 
Apparent Failure, 208 
Appearances , 261 
Arcades Ambo, 254 
Aristophanes^ Apology, 255-6, 286 

note 2 
Artemis Prologizes, 130 
Asolando, 71, 282 
Asolando, Epilogue to, 282 
At the " Mermaid," 260 ; parodied, 

272 
Avison, Charles, Parleyings with, 

1 5-6 
Ben KarshooJis Wisdom, 201 and 

Appendix A 
Balaustion^s Adventure, 242, 243, 

244-6, 302 
Bartoli, Daniel, Parleyings with, 

19-20 

Bells and Pomegranates, 57, 123, 

124, 127, 130, 133-5, 170, 

172, 303 

Bishop Bloug) ant's Apology, 132, 

198 ; reviewed by Wiseman, 202 

Bishop, The, orders his Tomb, 

129 ; Ruskin on, 130 
Blot in the ^Scutcheon, A, 46, 
loS, 113 ; Arnould's description 
of performance of, 114-9 ; 127, 
134 and note I, 135, 146, 167 
By the Fireside, 197 ; its autobio- 



graphical interest, 198; locality 

of, 199 
Caliban upon Setebos,, 249 
Cardinal and the Dog, The, 23 
Cavalier Tunes, 127 
Childe Roland, 189, 198 
Christmas Eve and Easter Day, 

166, 172-6, 194, 198, 296 
Clean, 198, 295 
Clive, 268 
Colombo s Birthday, 62, 76, 119- 

21, 122, 123, 127, 190 
Confessional, The, 133 
Confessions, 233, 303 
Count Gismond, 133 
Cristina, 133 
De Gustibus, 128, 199 
Deaf and Dumb, 227 
Dis aliter visum, 233 
Dodington {George Bubb), Parley- 
ings with, 17 
Dramatic Idylls, 35, 268 
Dramatic lyrics, 35, 38, 125, 126, 

127, 130, 146, 198 
Dramatic Romances, 35, 125, 127, 

130, 198 
Dramatis Persona, 35, 206, 233- 

4, 236, 246, 261, 268, 303 
Englishman in Italy, The, 129, 

131 

Epistle, An, 198 

Eurydice to Orpheus, 234 

Face, A, 234 

FerishtalCs Fancies, 266, 275, 298 

Fifne at the Fair, 19, 233, 249, 
250, 258, 259 

Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege 
of Burial, 15, 261 

Flight of the Duchess, The, 129, 
198 

Flower. s Name, The, 133 

Forest Thought, A, 64 and Appen- 
dix A 

Forgivetuss, A, 261 

Era Lippo Lippi, 10, 15, 1 3 1, 199, 
200, 207 

Furini, Francis, Parleyings ivith, 
277 

Garden Fancies, 23 

Glove, The, 38, 50, 127, 133 

Gold Hair, 232, 233 

Goldoni, Sonnet to, 274-5 

Guardian Angel, The, 14, 88, 166, 
189, 198 

Helenas Toiver, 242 and Appen- 
dix A 

Heretic's Tragedy, The, 199 

He>-ve Riel, 237, 243, 289 note i 

Holy Cross Day, 199 

Home Thoughts from Abroad, 
128 



INDEX 



333 



Home Thoughts from the Sea, 20, 

94 note I, 127 
House, 260 
I/o7o they brought the Good Neius 

from Ghent to Aix, 20, 67, 94 

note I, 128 
In a Gondola, 14, 76, 128, 131 
Incofidita, 4 1, 57 
Inn Album, The, 252, 257, 258, 

298 
Italian in England, The, 129, 1 58 
Ivdn Ivhnovitch, 64, 266 
Ixion, 298 

yafnes Lee's Wife, 232, 233 
Jochanan Hakkadosh, 273 
Jocoseria, 24, 239 note 1, 272-3 
A'/V/^ Victor and King Charles, 25, 

28, 94, 112, 124, 126 
La Saisiaz, 212, 249, 255, 258, 

264 and note i, 265, 297 note i, 

298 
Laboratory, The, 133 
Lairesse (Gerard de) Farleyings 

with, 9-10, 14, 15 
Last Duchess, My, 124, 131, 133 
Likeness, A, 55, note I 
Lost Leader, The, 13 1-2, 132 

note I 
Lost Mistress, The, 124 
Love Among the Riuns, 189, 194, 

302 
Lovers' Quarrel, A, 202] 
Luria, 127, 295 
Lyric, A, from the German, 273 

and Appendix A 
Mandeville (Bernard de). Par ley - 

ings with, 19 
Master Hugues of Saxe Got ha, 17 
May and Death, 55, 232, 234 
Memorabilia, 185 
Men and Wofnen, 189, 196, 197, 

198-202, 208, 233, 301, 303 
Narses (contemplated but not 

written), 25, 104 and note i 
Ned Bratls, 266 
Nunipholeptos, 26 1 
Old Pictures in Florence, 165, 166, 

189, 199 
One Word More. To E. B. B., 14, 

196, 197, 198, 200 
Only a Player-girl (written and 

destroyed), 62 
Pacchiarotto (Of) and how he 

worked in distemper, 203, 258-61 
Pambo, 24-5, 260 
Paracelsus, 6, 18, 25, 28, 35, 39, 

47. 54, 57. 65, 66, 71-8, 89, 

94, 105, 107, 135, 136, 139, 

14s, 148, 172, 183, 195, 231, 

253, 295 
Parleymgs with Certain People of 



Importance i?i their Day, 6, 9, 

10, 16, 19, 20, 277 
Patriot, The, 158 
Pauline, 4, 5,9, 22, 28, 30, 31-3, 

35. 37, 39. 40-1, 45, 48, 50- 

1, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58 and note 

2, 59, 60-1, 65-6, 72, 89, 91, 
137, 167 note I, 231, 237 note I 

Phcidippides, 268 

Pic tor Jgnoius, 130 

Pied Piper of Hameliyi, The, 21-2, 

24, 43, 128 
Pietro of Abano, 303 
Pippa Passes, 28, 35, 37, 86, 95, 

no, 124-6, 281, 302 
Prifice Hohefistiel - Schwangau, 

Saviour of Society, 1 81, 206 note 

3, 219 and note i, 244, 249, 295, 

303 
Prospicc, 234, 235, 280 
Rabbi Ben Ezra, 234, 297 
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, 

250, 251 and note i, 252, 303 
Respectability, 199 
Return of the Druses, The, 25, 28, 

108, 113, 124, 127 
Reverie, 71 
Ring and the Book, The, 15, 18, 

23, 63, 189, 227-31, 235, 236, 

237 and note 2, 239-41, 242, 

245, 246, 258,281, 303, 308-26 
Rude I to the Lady of Tripoli, 128 
Saul, 6, 124, 130, 198 
Serenade at the Villa, A, igg 
Shop, 302-3 
Sludge, Mr., the "■Medium,'^ 132, 

206, 234, 295 
Smart ( Christopher), Parleyings 

with, 6-7 
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, 

132 
Sonnet, A, 12, and Appendix A 
Sordello, 18, 25, 28, 35, 39, 57, 62, 

84, 89-103, 104, 107, 112, 

114, 124, 125, 128, 136, 137, 

139, 161, 167 note I, 208, 231, 

248, 258, 281, 300, 301, 302 
SouVs Tragedy, A, 127, 168, 231 
Statue (The) a?td the Bust, 199 
Strafford, 35, 46, 57, 90, 93, 

107-11, 114, 125, 127, 300 
Through the Metidja to Abd-el- 

Kadr, 6, 128 
Tillies Revenges, 88, 133 
Toccata of Galuppi's A, 17, 199, 

301 
Too Late, 233 

" Tra7iscendentalism," 23, 200 
Tray, 254 
Twins, I 'he, 199 
Two in the Campagna, 199 



334 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 



Two Poets of Croisic, The, 237-8 

Up at a Villa, 199 

Waring, 63, 88, 1 28, 131, 132, 

303 

IVhy I am a Liberal, 171, 2S9-91 

Women and Roses, 189 

Worst of it, The, 233 
BrowTiing, Mrs. (Elizabeth Barrett 
Barrett), her childhood and youth, 
143-4 ; impression created by her 
Rom aunt of Margaj-ct, 145 ; her ill- 
ness and loss of her favourite brother, 
145 ; her admiration of Browning's 
early work, 146 ; her Poems pub- 
lished, 147 ; her correspondence with 
Browning, 148 ; her understanding 
with him, 149 ; her improving health, 
150; her marriage, 151; and de- 
parture from England, 152; at Pisa, 
153 ; her Sonnets from the Portu- 
guese, 154 ; her happiness, 155 ; 
arrives at Florence, 156; meets Mrs. 
Jameson there, 157 ; her enthusiasm 
for Italian unity, 158; her attach- 
ment to Florence, 159; but not to 
its society, 160 ; visits Vallombrosa, 
161 ; her friendship with Mary 
Boyle, 162 ; described by G. S. 
Hillard, 163; the flat in Casa Guidi 
secured, 164 ; visits Fano and An- 
cona, 165 ; cheered by Father Prout, 
167 ; birth of her son, 168 ; at Bagni 
di Lucca, 169 ; her improved health, 
169-70 ; her friendships with Mar- 
garet Fuller and Isa Blagden, 171 ; 
marriage of her sister, 172 ; on 
Christinas Eve and Kaster Day, 
175 ; her illness and removal to 
Siena, 176 ; in Venice, 177 ; returns 
to England, 178; in Loudon, 179; 
and Paris, 180 ; her admiration for 
Louis Napoleon, iSl ; and for George 
Sand, 182 ; distressed by Miss Mit- 
ford's indiscretion, 186; meets Lan- 
der, 187 ; views Napoleon's progress 
through Paris, 188; her quiet life in 
Florence, 190; enjoys the Storys' 
society, 191 ; visits Rome, 192; her 
friends there, 193-5 ! '^^^ ^' 
ncss and return to England, 196 ; 
her portrait in By the Fireside, 197 ; 
her spiritualistic leanings, 202 ; 
present at D. D. Home's seance, 203 ; 
her view of it, 204; and subsequent 
attitude to spiritualism, 205-6 ; 
hears Tennyson read Maud, 206- 
7 ; in Paris, 20S ; publishes Aurora 
Leigh, 209 ; loses her father and 
John Kenyon, 210; in France, 211 ; 
in a storm at sea, 212 ; at Florence, 
and at Rome, 213; "imprisoned by 



tramontana," 214 ; distressed by 
Villafranca, 215 ; her failing health, 
216 ; at Siena, 217 ; and Rome, 218 ; 
publishes Poems before Congress, 219 ; 
last sojourn at Siena, 220 ; saddened 
by Cavour's death, 221 ; her own 
death in Florence, 222 ; her hus- 
band's sorrow, 223-5 ; Haw- 
thorne's description of her, 229 ; 
proposals to write her life, 231-2 ; 
her personality bound up with The 
Ping and The Pooh and Palaustio/i's 
Adventure, 245 ; Browning's devotion 
to her memory, 292-4 ; other 
references to, 4, 5, 13, 30, 42, 56, 
62, 65, 66, 93, 103, 121, 123, 137, 
139-40, 141, 247, 271, 283, 289, 
297 
Browning, Mr. Robert Barrett (son of 
the poet), 168, 169, 176, 180, 1S8, 
192 and note i, 195, 204-5, 209, 
210, 211, 216-8, 220, 224, 225, 
226, 227, 231 note I, 233, 235, 253- 
4, 257, 265, 276, 278, 280, 282, 

Browning, William Shergold (the poet's 

uncle), 7, 64, 65 
Browning, Sarah Anna (the poet's 

mother), I, 4 ; a musician, 15, 17 ; 

her love of birds and animals, 36 ; 

her son's devotion to her, 40, 86 ; 

her piety, 49-50 ; her death, 122 ; 

her son's sorrow at it, 169 
Browning, Savianna (the poet's sister), 

I ; benefits under Pritchard's will, 

54 ; described by Arnould, 83 ; 

settles in Paris with her father, 186 ; 

joins her brother on her father's 

death, 237 ; at La Saisiaz, 263-4 ; 

her brother's unfailing companion, 

266-7 ; otherwise mentioned, 221, 

224, 246, 277, 294, 299 
Buchanan, Robert, 257, 296, 29S 
Buckstone, Mr,, 107 
Bunn, Alfred, 106, 107 
Bunyan, John, 266 
Burnand, Sir F. C, 206 note 2 
Busk, Mrs. W., 92-3, 96-7 
Byron, Lord, references to his life or 

works, 32, 37, 41, 42, 55, 104, 105, 

143. 153, 249, 251 



Cambridge Lntelligencer, The, 44 and 

note I 
Campbell, Thomas, 124 
Caravaggio, P., 123 
Carlyle, Thomas, on Byron's death, 



INDEX 



335 



41 ; his desciiption of Browning's 
parents, 47 ; visits them at Hatcham, 
49 ; his fraich Revolution, 94 ; on 
Browning's early poetry, 135 ; Brown- 
ing dines with, 136; travels with 
the Brownings to Paris, 180 ; on 
AristophaTies^ Apology, 256 ; Brown- 
ing's Agamemnon dedicated to, 263 
and note l ; death of, 268 ; Brown- 
ing's view of, 269 ; other references 
to, 33. 77. 147. 179, 207, 240, 250 

Carlyle, Mrs., 187 

Carr, Mr. Comyns, his reminiscences 
of Browning, 285, 287 

Cartwright, Mr. W. C, visits the 
Brownings at Siena, 218 ; offered 
the Book by Browning, 229 ; visits 
Browning at Warwick Crescent, 
230 ; his friendship with the poet, 
231, note I ; at the Athenaeum, 248 

Gary, H, F., translator of Dante, 91 

Casa Guidi IVindo^os, 158 

Cattermole, George, 138 

Cavaignac, Louis, 181 

Cavour, Camillo, writes on behalf of 
Italian unity, 157 ; makes alliance 
with Napoleon III, 214 ; Mrs. 
Browning's admiration for, 221 ; 
death of, 222 1 

Cerutti, Angelo, teacher of Italian, 19, 
20, 90 

Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, 157 ; 
grants a constitution, 163 ; his pat- 
riotism, 164 ; left in the lurch, 167 ; 
at Novara, 168 

Chorley, H. F., 137 

Clarendon, Lord, on Papal misrule, 214 

Claudian, 288 

Clayton, Revd. George, 50 and note 2 

Clough, A. H., 173 

Cobbe, Frances Power, on Browning's 
love of flowers, -40 ; on Pisa, 1 53 ; 
at Florence, 164 ; unable to read 
Browning, 201 note 3 ; on Brown- 
ing's hatred of spiritualism, 205 note 
2 ; on his delight at the success of 
Aurora Leigh, 209-10; at a dinner- 
party, 254 ; on Browning's fund of 
anecdote, 285-6 

Cobden, Richard, at Rome, 157 ; al 
Florence, 159 

Cockburn, Sir A., 254 

Cockburn, Mrs., 34 

Coleridge, Lord, 248, 251 

Coleridge, S. T., his life or works 
referred to, 34, 35, 37,42,44 note i, 
54, 72, 77.91, 135 

Collier, Payne, 112 

Collyer, Dr. B., 29 note I 

Colvin, Mr. Sydney, 286 
Comte, Auguste, 173 



Constitutional, The, on Strafford, 109 
Corkran, Mr. Fraser, 1 88 
Corkran, Mrs., 183 note 2, 205 note 2 
Corfthill Magazine, The, Browning 

declines the editorship of, 227 ; 

//^;WAVf/ published in, 243 
Couring, Hermann, 70 
Courtney of PenwiLh, Lord, 19 note i, 

241 note 2 
Cowley, Abraham, 53 
Cowper, Lady, 243 
Crawford, Thomas, 192 
Crawford, F. Marion, 192 note 4 
Cunningham, Allan, reviews Pauline, 

58 
Curtis, G. W,, 160 ; at Vallombrosa 

with the Brownings, 161 
Cushman, Miss Charlotte, 137, 188 



D 



Daily News, The, 82, 118, 200 

Dale, Mr., as Charles I, loS 

Dallas, E. S., 237 note 2 

Dante, influence of, traceable in Sor- 
dello, 90, 91, 95, 96, 102, 103 ; his 
tomb at Ravenna, 165 ; quoted by 
Browning, 297 

Darley, Mr. (dramatist), 114 

Darwin, C, 295 

d'Azeglio, Massimo, 214 

Delane, J. T., 290 

Desforges-Maillard, Paul, 238 

Dial, The, 170 

Dickens, Charles, 82 ; as critic, 112 ; 
his enthusiasm for A Blot in the 
''Scutcheon, 115 ; as Kitely, 121 ; his 
method of publishing, 124 

Digby, Sir K., 22 

Dodington, G. B., Lord Melcombe, 9, 

17 
Domett, Alfred, i ; on Brownmg's 
schooldays, 29, 30, 33 ; his home , 
36 note 2 ; supposed a visitor to 
Moscow, 63 ; on Browning's poetical 
reputation, 76 ; one of the " Collo- 
quials," 80 ; studies for the Bar, 82 ; 
his early years, 83 ; his friendship 
with Browning, 84-5 ; defends Pippa 
Passes, 86 ; prototype of Waring, 
87 ; in New Zealand, 88 ; addressed 
in The Guardian Angel, 166 ; re- 
newal of intercourse with Browning, 
247-64 ; publishes his epic, 248 ; 
deprecates Browning's rapidity in 
composition, 251 ; quotes his favourite 
passage in Paracelsus, 253 ; suggests 
the addition of notes io Aristophanes' 
Apology, 256 ; deprecates Browning's 



Jj^ 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 



attack on certain critics, 260 ; dis- 
satisfied with Agamemnon, 263 ; and 
with /ocoseria, 273 ; his death, 277 ; 
on Browning's modesty, 287 ; on 
Mrs. Browning's portrait, 293 ; on 
Browning's appearance, 299 ; on Sor- 
dello, 300-1 ; otherwise mentioned, 
66, Si, 89, 131, 134, 137, 138, 1S7, 
188, 194 note I, 208, 229, 232, 246, 
269, 296 

Domett, John, 30 

Domett, Mary, 81 

Domett, Admiral Sir William, 83 

Donne, J., 47 

D'Orsay, Count, 217 

Dourlans, Gustave, 264, 267 note I 

Dowden, Professor, 241 note 2 

Dowden, Mrs., 269, 2S8 

Dowson, Christopher, one of the 
" Colloquials," 80; his career, 81; 
entertains Browning, 85 ; Browning's 
letter to, 120-1 

Dowson, Joseph (brother of the above), 
81 

Dufferin, Lord, 242 

Duffy, Gavan, discusses Bdls and Pome- 
granates with Carlyle, 135; Brown- 
ing's admission to, 202 

Dulwich Gallery, The, 1 1, 207 

Dunraven, Lord, 203 

Duquaire, Mme., 213 



E 



Earles, Mr., 21, 43 
Eckley, Mr,, 213 

Edinburgh Re7'icw, The, and one of 
Browning's pet geese, 36 ; reviews 
Strafford, 93, 300 ; praises The Ring 
and the Book, 240 

Elgin, Lady, 181 ; her salon, iSi note 
I ; her illness, 211 

Eliot, George, 18, 286 

Emerson, R. W., quoted, 66 ; at Con- 
cord, 161 ; and the Dial, 170; his 
meeting with Browning, 252 

Erastus, Thomas, 70 

Etienne, M., 200 

Eugenie, Empress, on her husband's 
rule, 244 

Euripides, 227 and note 3, 243 ; Mrs. 
Browning's love of, 245 ; Browning 
at work on, 253 ; Browning's trans- 
cripts from, 256 ; and interest in, 
288 

Examiner, Tlie, 58 ; Forster reviews 
Paracelsus in, 73; sins of, 140; 
praises Christmas Eve and Easter 
Day, 172 ; on Colombis Birthday, 
190 



Faucit, Helen (Lady Martin), 46 ; as 
Lady Carlisle, 108-9 1 ^s Mildred 
Tresham, 117 ; as Colombe, 121, 
190 ; other references to, 203, 277 

Fauveau, Mile, de, 164 

Ferdhiand II ("Bomba"), 157, 163, 
214 

Fielden, Mr., 265 

Fielding, Henry, 3 

Finch, Margaret, 55 

Fi.^licr, W., 193, 195 note i 

Fitzball, Edward, 105 and note I, 106 
and note 2, 107, no, III 

Fitzgerald, Edward, on Browning's 
poetry, 240 ; Browning's sonnet on, 
292-3 

Fitzgerald, Mr. Percy, 292 note 2 

Flower, Benjamin, 43 

Flower, Eliza, admires hicondita, 42 ; 
makes a copy of it, 43 ; intimacy 
with Browning, 44-6, 53, 76 

Flower, Sarah, lier letter about Pauline, 
44; intimacy with Browning, 45; 
her letter to Fox, 46 ; discusses 
theology with Browning, 51 

Flush (Mrs. Browning's do<T), 146, 
151, 152, 153, 154, 162, 20S 

Forman, Mr. H. B., 262 

Forster, John, 18 and note I ; early 
life and first meeting with Browning, 
74 and note i, 75-6 ; helps to found 
the Daily N'ews, 82 ; at the perform- 
ance of Ion, 107 ; Dickens' letter 
to, 115 ; disagreement with Brown- 
ing, 119; it blows over, I2I ; corre- 
sponds with Browning about Landor, 
216; receives letter from Landor, 
217 note I : his quarrel with Brown- 
ing, 292 ; other references to, 94, 
116, 124, 128, 138, 167, 179, 207, 
216, 231 

Fortia, Marquis de, 64 and note 3 

Fortnightly Rez'icw, The, reviews 7 he 
Ring and the Book, Zifi 

Fox, William Johnson, 42 ; his career, 
43-4 ;his laudatory review o{ Pauline, 
57-8 ; finds a publisher for Paracelsus, 
72 ; introduces Browning to Mac- 
ready, 74-5 ; receives letter from 
Browning about Sordello, 89 ; at 
production of Strafford, 109 ; intro- 
duces Browning to Miss Martineau, 
136 ; proofs of Men and Women 
read to, 198 ; other references to 
46, 53. 73. 76, 112, 134 note 2 

Froude, J. A., 269 

Fuller, "Margaret (Contessa Ossoli), 
161, 170-1 



INDEX 



337 



Furness, Dr. H. H., 235 

Furnivall, Dr. F. J., founds the Brown- 
ing Society, 269-70 ; a letter to, 
from Browning, 277-8 



Gagarin, Prince, meets Browning in 
Venice, 64 

Garibaldi, G., at Novara, 168 ; lands in 
Sicily, 219; conquers that island, 
221 

Gaudrian, de, Miss, 204-5 

Gentilhonime, Rene, 238 

Gibson, John, R.A., 157, 192 and 
note 4, 193 

Giorgi, Signor, 240 

Gladstone, W. E., on " Bomba's " rule, 
214 ; and Home's pension, 254-5 ; 
and socialism, 289 

Glennie, Dr., 55 

Goldoni, Browning's sonnet on, 274-5 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 29 

Goodson, the' Misses, 20 

Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 118 note l ; a 
letter from Browning to, 134 note 2 ; 
conveys to Browning Dr. Furness' 
message, 235 ; on Swinburne's atti- 
tude to Browning, 258 note i ; 
receives Beddoes' papers from Brown- 
ing, 272 ; meets Browning at Cam- 
bridge, 279 ; other references to, 238, 
288 

Guardian, The, on The Inn Album, 
257 



H 



Hallam, A. H., 142 

Handel, G. F., 123 

Hanmer, Sir John, 129, 131 

Harrison, Frederick, 264 

Haworth, Miss Euphrasia Fanny, 39 ; 
Browning's friendship with, 138 ; her 
sonnets to him, 139; "proposed 
ingratitude" to, 140; becomes a 
friend of Mrs. Browning, 179; other 
references to, 57 note 3, 90, 112, 205, 
224 note I 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, i6i, 203, 229- 

30 
Hazlilt, William, 13, 14, 107, 303 
Hegel, G., 288 
Hickey, Miss Emily, joint founder of 

the Browning Society, 269 
Hill, Mr. Frank, 1 18 
Hillard, G. S., 163, 168 
Hiller, Ferdinand, 287 
Home, D. D., the "medium," 203-6, 

and 206 notes 2 and 3, 234 
Z 



Homer, 288 

Hookham, Thomas, 185 

Hoole, John, 77 note i 

Home, Richard Hengist, 76 ; his New 
Spirit of the Age, 134; corresponds 
with Miss Barrett, 143 ; the corre- 
spondence published with Browning's 
sanction, 232 ; his pension, 254-5 ; 
his remembrance of Keats, 262 ; 
other references to, 93, 1 12, 146, 

147, 153 

Hosmer, Hatty, 193-4 

Hughes, Mr., 48 

Hugo, Victor, 177, 181 

Huish, Mr. M. B., 287 

Hunt, Leigh, criticizes Paracelsus, 69 ; 
in Cheyne Row, 77 ; his The Glove 
and the Lion, 127; at Pisa, 154; on 
Shelley's death, 262 ; other references 
to, 185 note I, 209 

Hunt, Mrs. Leigh, 66 

Hutton, R. H., his opinion of Red Cot- 
ton Night-Cap Country^ 251 ; on the 
soul, 264 

Huxley, T. H., 264 



Irons, Revd. Joseph, 50 and note 3 
Irving, Mr. H. B,, in Strafford, iii 
note I 



Jameson, Mrs., makes Miss Barrett's 
acquaintance, 147 ; welcomes the 
Brownings in Paris, 152 ; with them 
at Pisa, 154 ; visits them in Florence, 
156 ; other references to, I2, 13, 151, 
159, 163, 164 note I, 170, 175, I79. 
268 

Jerrold, Douglas, 107, 109 

Joachim, Dr., 17 

/ohn Bull, The, on Strafford, 1 1 1 

Johnson, Dr., 77 note i, 80, 238, 270 

Jones, Ebenezer, 134 and note 2 

Jones, Revd. Thomas, 226-7 

Jowett, Professor, 81 ; writes about 
Browning, 224 note 2, 236 ; entertains 
him at Oxford, 238 ; visited by him 
in Scotland, 243-4 ; other references 
to, 256; 279, 290, 293 



K 



Kant, Emmanuel, 295 
Kean, Charles, and Colombe's Birthday, 
I19-21, 127 



138 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 



Kean, Edmund, 45 ; allusion to in 
Pauline, 46 ; in Richard III, 57 ; 
his funeral attended by Browning, 
74; Browning's regard for, 75, 119 

Keats, John, his life or works referred 
to, 28, 37, 53, 54, 154 ; Home's 
reminiscences of, 262-3 

Keepsake^ The, Ben Karshook's Wisdom 
published in, 201 ; May and Death 
published in, 232 

Kelsall, Mr., 272 

Kembles, The, 105 

Kemble, Fanny, in Rome, 194 ; her 
appearance, 194 note i, 207 

Kenyon, John, schoolfellow of Brown- 
ing's father, 25 ; on Browning's know- 
ledge, 26 ; meets Browning, 140- 1 ; 
connected with West Indies, 143 ; 
his description of Miss Barrett, 144 ; 
praises her Dead Pan, 146-7 ; sus- 
pects her engagement, 150; not privy 
to her marriage, 151 ; his illness, 
208-9 j ^"^^ death 210; other refer- 
ences to, 148, 1S7, 200 

Killing no Murdir, 136 

Kinglake, A, W., on Browning's eru- 
dition, 26 ; meets him at Sir John 
Hanmer's, 129; pnpil of B. W. 
Procter, 138; intercourse with Brown- 
ing, 207 

Kingsland, W. G., 302 

Kingsley, Charles, 187 

Kirkup, Seymour, 203, 206 

Knight, Professor, 295 

Knowles, Sheridan, 106, 300 

Knowles, Sir James, 239 



Lairesse, Gerard de, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15 
Lamb, Charles, his life or works referred 

to, 4, 55, 72, 124, 297 
Landor, W. S., at the Ion supper, 77 > 
at Covent Garden Theatre, 107 ; 
his estimate of Browning's early 
poetry, 134; meets Miss Barrett, 
145 ; appreciates her Poenis, 147 ; 
his opinion of Mary Boyle, 162 ; at 
Kenyon's house, 187 ; his writings 
admired by Browning, 200 ; scoffs at 
spiritualism, 206 ; quarrels with his 
family, 216 ; Browning's care for, 
217 and note l ; at Siena, 220; his 
finances managed by Browning, 288 ; 
wishes Browning would " atticize," 
300 
Lansdowne, Lord, 268 
Lehmann, Miss Alma, 279-80 
Lehmann, Frederick, 20 note 3, 255, 
265 



Lehmann, Mrs. Frederick, 242 
Lehmann, Rudolf, 205 note 2, 255, 

299 
Leighton, Sir F. (afterwards Lord), 

193, 194, 207, 224 note I, 234 ; the 

" great Kaunian painter," 245 ; 

Browning frequents his studio, 246 ; 

on Browning s talk, 285 ; on his 

obscurity, 300 
Leopold II, of Tuscany, 159, 160 

102, 163, 164, 168, 189, 215 
Lever, Charles, 159, 170 
Lewes, George, 248 
Literary Gazette, The, on Colombe's 

Birthday, 190 
Lockhart, J. G., 72-3, 194-5 
London University, foundation of, 48 
London Quarterly, The, on The Ring 

and the Book, 240 
Loradoux, M., 47 
Louis Philippe, 164 
Lowell, J. R,, with Browning at the 

Dulwich Gallery, 207 
Lushington, Vernon, visits Browning 

at Siena, 287 
Lytton, Bulwer, 76, 105, 112, 114 
Lytton, Robert (afterwards Earl of), 

190 ; his admiration of Browning, 

igi ; at Florence, 195 ; illness of, 

210; other references to, 201, 202, 

203 



M 



Macaulay, Lord, 268 and note i 
Maclise, Daniel, 76, 112, 12S 
Macready, W., his first meeting with 
Browning, 74-5 ; asks Browning to 
write him a tragedy, 90 ; on the 
drama, 104 ; his difficulties, 106 ; 
in Ion, 107 ; in Strafford, 108-9 5 
his management at Covent Garden, 
111-2; Browning's letter to, 113; 
his second management, 114; his 
doubts about A Blot in the 'Sait- 
cheon, 115 ; his action in the matter, 
1 1 7-9 ; other references to, no, 
127, 136, 138 ^ 

Mahoney, Francis. See Prout 
Mandeville, Bernard de, 9, 19 
Marathon, The Battle of, 143 and 

note I 
Marston, J. W., 115 
Martin, Sir Theodore, 277 
Martineau, Harriet, on Paracelsus 
and Sordello, 136 ; on Browning's 
character, 137 ; writes to Miss Bar- 
rett, 147 ; on Browning's style, 300 
Masaccio, 200 
Masson, Professor, 275 
Masson, Miss, 275 



INDEX 



339 



Mazzini, G., admires The Italian in 
England, 129 and note 2 ; in exile, 
157 ; at Novara, i68 ; in London, 
187 

Melander, Otto, 24 

Mellerio, M., 250 

Merrifield, Mr., 204 

Meyerbeer, Carl, 234 

Mill, James, 43 

Mill, J. S., 58 ; his note on Pauline, 
59. 60, 91 

Millais, Sir J. E., 227, 253 

Millais, Mrs., 236 

Mills, Monckton, Lord Houghton, 157 

Milner, Revd. ]., 29 and note i 

Milsand, Joseph, his ancestry and early 
life, 182 ; his article on Browning's 
poetry, 183 ; his constructive criti- 
cism, 184 ; his first meeting with 
Browning, 186 ; hears from Brown- 
ing, 189 ; his review of Me7i and 
Women, ZOX-z ; his home at Dijon, 
211 ; his portrait, 242-3; at War- 
wick Crescent, 248 ; in Normandy, 
250 ; his death, 277 ; a churchgoer, 
296 

Milton, John, 139, 161 

Mitford, Miss, at the performance 
of Ion, 107 ; friend of Talfourd, 145 ; 
giver of "Flush "to Miss Barrett, 
146 ; finds a publisher for "Sonnets 
by E.B.B.," 154; Mrs. Browning's 
correspondent, 163 ; her article on 
the Brownings, 186 ; her death, 196 

Mohl, Mme., i8i 

Monclar, Marquis de, 64 and note 3 

Montagu, Basil, 138 

Monthly Repository, The, review of 
Pauline in, 57 ; J. S. Mill writes in, 
58 ; Browning's sonnet in, 73 and 
Appendix A ; R. H. Home writes 
in, 112 

Moore, Mrs. Bloomfield, 267 

Moore, Thomas. 15 

Morris, William, 287 

Moxon, Edward, declines Paracelsus, 
72 ; publisher of Bells and Pome- 
granates, 124-5, 127 ; withdraws 
spurious Shelley letters, 183 

Murray, John, 248 



N 



Napoleon I, 297 

Napoleon HI, Mrs. Browning's 
admiration for, 171 ; and the coup 
d'Hat, 181 ; Landor's view of, 187 ; 
assumes the title of Emperor, 188 ; 
divergent views of, 206 ; baptism of his 
son, 208 ; Orsini's attempt upon, 211 ; 



humbles Austria, 214-5 5 Landor 
writes against, 217 ; "a monologue 
in his name," 219 ; his achievements, 
244 ; allusion to, in Red Cottoti Night- 
cap Country, 251 and note I 

Nazione, The, 222 

Neander, Michael, 71 

Nettleship, J. T., 236, 251 note I, 270 

Nettleship, R. L., 276 

New Monthly Magazine, The, 127 ; 
The Romaunt oj Margaret printed in, 
"371 '45 » Miss Haworth's sonnets 
printed in, 139 

Nezu Spirit of the Age, The, 134, 147, 
299 

New York Times, The, The Inn Album 
printed in, 257 

Atw York Tribune, The, Bells aid 
Pomegranates reviewed in, 170 

Nineteenth Century, The, a discussion 
in, 264 

Noel, Roden, 264 

"North, Christopher," 73 



O 



O'Connell, Daniel, 157 

Ogilvy, Mrs. David, 177, 205 note 2 

Ogle, Miss, 229 

Orr, Mrs., 55 ; on Childe Roland, 199 
note I ; on Audierne, 239 note 2 ; 
her Handbook, 271 note i ; other- 
wise mentioned, 274, 279 

Orsini, Felice, 211 

Osbaldiston, Mr., 105, 106, 108, 114 

Ossoli, Contessa. See Fuller 

Ostade, A. van, 123 

Oswald, Lady, 195 



Page, William, 192-3 

Pall Mall Gazette, The, Goldoni son- 
net printed in, 274 ; Browning's 
liking for, 290 

Paracelsus, Aureolus, 22, 176 

Patmore, Coventry, 124 

Patmore, Mrs. Coventry, 234 

Peeke, Mr., 107 

Pepys, Samuel, 55 

Phelps, Samuel, in A Blot in the 
^Scutcheon, 116-7 ; in Colotnb^s 
Birthday, 121 ; revives the Blot, 167 

Pio Nono, hopes of, 157 ; news of, 
163 J abandons progressive principles, 
167 ; in opposition to national senti- 
ment, 218 

Planche, J. R., 107 



340 THE LIFE OF ROBERT P.ROWNING 



Pkafor tk* Ragged Schools of Ltmdmt, 

-•*, 199 

Plutarch, 244 

Fc^His t^fort CoHgress, 219 

Fo^ie, Alexiindei, 30 

Powell, T., 53 an J note i 

Powers, Hinxm, 50, i6o-t, liOj 

I^itchanl, Captain, 54, So 

Procter. Bryan Waller ('* Barry Corn- 
wall "), meets Browning, 7t>-7 ; at 
Chorley's. 137 ; his home, 13S : helps 
to edit second etlition of Browning's 
jHvms, 107 : otherwise nientione*.!, 
179, 207, 2J7, 231 

Procter, Mrs., 13S. 207,227 

"Prout, Father" (Francis Mahoney), 
*53» '57 > -^^ Florence, 163 : pre- 
scribes for Browning. 167 ; at Paris, 
211 

PuHck^ its vei^ses on Browniing, 271-2 



1S7 ; Browning writes to, 193 ; 
admires Browning's poetry, 201 ; 
Browning sits to, 207 ; visiter.! by 
Browning, 121 ; remarks on his 
jKvetry by Browning. 257-S 

Rossetti, y\.x. \V. M., his pre^-Hction 
about Browning, 134 ; in Dorset St., 
207 note I ; as intermevliary, 212 
note I ; on Browning's admiration 
for Salvini, 2S6 note 3 ; Browning 
\N rites to, 2S7 

Rousseau, J. J.. 212 

Ruskin, John, on Browning's know- 
ledge of the Middle Ages, 130 ; his 
Mi\ifnt Fain'.crs, 166 ; other refer- 
ences to, 3a 'o^, ii>2-3, 1S7, 207, 
209 

Rynur, Mrs., 203-4 



Quarles, F., his Emblfms, 31 
{^Hartfh Rr,if.t\ The, and Browning's 

|>et goose, 36 ; reviews Tkt Ring attd 

tiuBmk, 240 



R 



Radetsky, Genenil, 16S 

/Ctmc.W, The, reviews JMm tuut 

IfcmrH, 202 
Ready, Rewl. Thomas (Browning's 

schoolmaster), 29-33, 3^. 47 
Ready, the Misses, 31 
Relfei John. 16, 17 
Rembrandt, H.. 207 

reviewed in, 201 
Rn-uf Jfs i/rti.r A/.^hJ^s, The RtnganJ 

thi F-\-k reviewevl in. 240 
Riel, Herve, 23S and note i 
Ripert-Mondar, A. de, 04 :xnd note 3 : 
FatMctishs dedicated to, 65 ; its sub- 
ject suggested by, 65, oS ; meets 
Browning in Italy. 195 
Ritchie. L~4dy, 13S note I ; a reminis- 
cence of Browiung by, 194 ; on 
Browning's attitude to spiritualism, 
205 note 2 : writes an account of Mn>. 
Browning. 232 : Browning's neigh- 
bour in Normandy, 250 ; on Brown- 
ing's )'outhfulne«s, 27 1 note a 
Robertson. John, 137 
Rogers, Samuel, 124, 151. 179 
Romiattn: -\f \Urgjrit, 7'i^, 137, 145 
Rossetti. D, G., 12 ; and Fii- Zjik'^u- 
ti^ry, 133 ; describes Ebeneier Jones, 
134 : acquaintance with Browning 



i Sand, George, 163, 171, 1S1-2 

I Salvini, Tommas*.^ Browning's admira- 

' tion of, 2S6 and note 3 

Sambourne, E. L., Bn^wning sketched 
by. 271 

Sartoris, Adelaide, 137. 194. 207 

S<i.^nsjv Rn-uxi; The, 257 

Schumann, Clara, 17 

Scott. Sir Walter, 34 

Scott, W. Bell, 201 and note 2 

Severn, Joseph, 262 

Shah, The, 279 

Shakespeiire, William, a discussion on, 
252; otherwise mentioned. 70. Tl, 
132, 2S1, 295 

Shelley, Harriet, 1S5 

Shelley. P. B., his influence on Brown- 
ing, 49, 51-3, discernible in Fttra- 
iv/sus, 66-9 ; the (spurious) letters 
of, 1S3 ; his genius. Browning on, 
1S4-6 : Leigh Hunt's reminiscences 
of, 262 : other references to, 2S, 32. 
77, 9S. 123. 129, 153, 154. 191, 200 
note 2, 201, 274, 2S1. 296, 29S note 1 

Shelley, Sir Timothv, 3 

Sidg\vick, Mrs. Arthur, meets Brown- 
ing at Oxford, 271 

Silverthorne, Christiana (Browning's 
aunt), 4, 57 note i 

Silverthorne. George, 54-5 

Silverthorne, James, 45 ; Browning's 
verses on his death, 54-5, 234 ; pre- 
sent at Browning's >reddingj 151 

Silverthorne, John, sen.. 4 

Silverthorne, John, jun., 54-5 

Simeon, Sir Joh.n, 261 

Smart, Christopher, his -Si-wr^ .V Dtniu, 
Browning's admiration for, 6, 7 ard 
note I, 129, 2S6 



INDEX 



341 



Smith, Alexander, 201 

Smith, Miss Anne Egerton, 42 ; 
Ikowning's friendship with, 255 ; 
her death and its commemoration in 
La Sa/siac, 263-4 

Smith, Mr. A. L., meets Browning at 
Oxford, 279 

Smitli, Mr. iJeorge Mmray, Brown- 
ing's friend and pubhsher, 239 and 
note I ; prints HervS Kiel in the 
Coruhi/lf 243 ; declines Ranolf and 
Atnohia, 248 ; his apprehensions 
about /Cii/ CoUan Night-Cap Coutthy, 
351 ; as a publisher, 289 note i 

Sonnets from the Portuguese, 142 ; why 
so named, 154 

Southey, Robert, his Thalaba drama- 
tised, 105 ; his description of Kenyon, 
140 ; otherwise mentioned, 9, 42 

Spencer, Herbert, 248, 288 

Stanfield, Clarkson, R.A., 76 

Stisted, Mrs., 190 

Story, Miss Edith, Thackeray reads 
aloud to, 192 and note 3 ; at Siena, 
217 ; in Scotland, 242 

Story, W. W., 56; friend of the 
Brownings, 167-8 ; at Bagni di Lucca 
with them, 191 ; and By the Fire- 
side, 198; at Siena, 2l6-8, 220; 
Browning models in his studio, 221 ; 
joins Browning after his wife's death, 
223-4 ^"^ 224 note I ; Browning as 
his literary representative, 225-6 ; 
his advice to Browning, 227 ; Brown- 
ing's correspondent, 235 ; with 
Browning in Scotland, 242 ; Brown- 
ing's farewell to, 282 

Story, Mrs., death of her son, 192 
(also mentioned in several of the 
above passages) 

Strauss, D. F., 173 

Sumner, Charles, 211 

Sussex, Duke of, 31, 48 

Swanwick, the Misses, 254 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 227 
note 3 ; meets Browning in Scotland, 
244 ; on Browning's poetry, 258 and 
note I ; on the rapidity of Browning's 
thought, 300 



Taifs Edinburgh Magazine, 58 
Talfourd, T. N., 76 ; supper at his 
house after the performance of Ion, 
77 ; his play acted, 107 ; Browning 
meets Kenyon at his house, 140 ; 
helps to prepare second edition of 
Browning's poetry, 167 ; other refer- 
ences to, 112, 124, 138, 145, 147 
Talfourd, Field, 81 



Taylor, Sir Henry, 72, 76, 124 
Tennyson, Alfreil (Lord Tennyson), 
meets the Brownings in Paris, 177- 
8 and 17S note i ; reviewed by Mil- 
sand, 183 ; his remark to Browning, 
iSS and note i ; dines with the 
Brownings in London, 206-7 I likes 
Apparent Failure, 208 ; seen by 
Browning at Amiens, 225 ; Brown- 
ing's appreciation of his Northern 
Farmer, 235 ; on The Ring and the 
Book, 239-40 ; his Queen Mary 
appreciated by Browning, 256-7 ; 
Browning's last letter to, 279 ; 
Browning's admiration for his ptjetry, 
287 ; repelled hy Sordello, 300 ; other 
mentions of, 32, 41, 57, 71, 84, 97, 
124, 147, 158, 161, 173, 187, 195, 
236, 242, 248, 250, 290, 301 

Tennyson, Frederick, his friendship 
with Browning, 189-90, 195 ; inclined 
towards spiritualism, 203 

Tennyson, llallam (now Lord Tenny- 
son), 178 note I, 187, 207 

Thackeray, W. M., 192 note 3, 227 

Thiers, A., 181 

Thirl wall, C, 240 

Thoreau, H. D., 161 

Times, The, 48 ; on A Blot in the 
'Scutcheon, 117 ; Browning's letter 
on D. D. Home in the Literary 
Supplement of, 204 ; his letter to 
Lord Courtney ol Penwith in ditto, 
241 note 2 ; in defence of Byron, 
249 ; in error about Jochanan Hakka- 
dosh, 273 ; Browning's intimate know- 
ledge of, 290 

Tittle, Margaret (Browning's grand- 
mother), 2, 3, 299 

Tree, Ellen (Mrs. C. Kean), 107, 120 

Trelawney, E. J., 185 note I 

Tritheim, Abbot, 65, 68 

TroUope, Mrs., 61, 176 

TroUope, Thomas Ailolphus, his de- 
scription of Browning in Florence, 
160; his recollections, 190; his dis- 
trust of D. D. Home, 206 note 2 



Van Amburgh, Mr., 106 
Vandenhofi", J. M., 108-10 
Verci, G. B. 94-6 
Vere, Aubrey de, 248 
Victor Emmanuel, 168, 214, 21S 
Vincent, Miss, 105, 109 
Virgil, 91, 102 
Vogler, Abbe, 234-5 
Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 51 



342 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 



w 



Wakefield, Dame Priscilla, 2 

Wanley, Nathaniel, 20 and note 3, 
22,25 

Warburton, Eliot, 134 note 2, 13S 

Ward, W. G., 264 

Waring, Mr., 63 

Watts, G. F., 299 

Weber, CM. von, 234 

Webster, Mr., 109. 113, 114 

IVc-stminsicT J^ct/tcu; The, 43, 137 

White, Rev. Edward, 50 

Wilson, Eftingham, publishes Paracel- 
sus, 72 

Wilson (Mrs. Browning's maid), 151-2, 
161, 200 note 3, 21S and note 2 

Wiseman, Cardinal, reviews Men and 
Women in the Rambler, 202 and 
note I 

Wolff, Sir H. D.. 190. 203 



Woolner, Thomas, R.A., 227 note 2 

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 267 

Wordsworth, William, drinks to Brown- 
ing's health, 77 ; at the performance 
of Ion, 107 ; and The Lost Leader, 
131-2, and 132 note i ; other refer- 
ences to, 4, 32, 42, 53, 123, 124, 
142, 145, 147, 302 

World, The, on the Browning Society, 
269 

Wyatt, R. J., 157 



Yates, Edmund, Browning's letter to, 

270 
Voung, Sir Frederick, S4 ; present at 

first night of Strafford, 109 
Young, G. F., 80 
Young, William Curling, early friend 

of Browning, 80-1, 87 



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